tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58053260926303062292018-02-21T06:27:21.124-08:00Floating ZoetropesAnuj Malhotrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02502413090811247862noreply@blogger.comBlogger119125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805326092630306229.post-43872894259585076702018-01-05T04:30:00.000-08:002018-01-05T04:30:12.705-08:00Short Notes #1: Respiratory Patterns<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333px; text-align: justify;">I was invited by my (erstwhile) Professor in Sarajevo, the great, very driven Tanja Vrvilo to <b>Film Mutations</b>, the film festival she organises twice - sometimes thrice an year in Zagreb. This year's programme was founded on an abstraction: Violence&nbsp;+ Utopia - and included work by Abel Ferrara, Bela Tarr, Marc Hurtado, Masai Adachi among others. I watched Hurtado's <i>Aurore</i>&nbsp;and I am reasonably certain I will not watch a better, more moving film this year.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13.3333px; text-align: justify;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 13.3333px; text-align: justify;">Tanja requested I help with short notes and literature for the <a href="https://filmskemutacije.com/">festival website</a>.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;sabon lt std&quot; , serif; font-size: 13.3333px; text-align: justify;"><br /></span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-C-77ibzLyW8/Wk9vYQUzUqI/AAAAAAAAQbg/EI60Yj_6rrca0QgWP8_omxkLGmUBbGKpgCLcBGAs/s1600/Aurore.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="688" data-original-width="1024" height="268" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-C-77ibzLyW8/Wk9vYQUzUqI/AAAAAAAAQbg/EI60Yj_6rrca0QgWP8_omxkLGmUBbGKpgCLcBGAs/s400/Aurore.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><i>Aurore</i></b> (1989) / Marc Hurtado</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: &quot;sabon lt std&quot; , serif; font-size: 13.3333px; text-align: justify;"><br /></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In relation to his work, Hutton mentions, ‘the <i>absence</i>of thought’ as one of his principle artistic goals. As an introduction to his own films, Hurtado emphasizes, ‘…the flesh <i>is</i>the spirit’. In both, the <i>interior</i> is denied an existence in and of itself: it will be deposited instead, in visible, tangible, exterior objects. In Hutton: the chimneys, the bow of a ship, a water sprinkler, but also, the waves of an ocean, patterns of clouds, or crops that sway in the breeze; in Hurtado: stray twigs, fields of flowers, soil, sky and the source of all life, the sun. In both, these objects will <i>mutate</i> under the gaze of their seers: they will lose meaning; they will no longer be signifiers or symbols of <i>anything </i>at all. These will be reduced (or simplified) to two-dimensional objects useful for nothing else but different material qualities: geometry, colour, shape, contours, texture. Hutton will accomplish this transfiguration through single, sustained <i>focus</i> (an uninterrupted, religious act of just looking), while in Hurtado, a combination of diverse distractions will yield a <i>concentration</i>. Another crucial difference: Hutton will hold his breath to the point of death (a black screen); Hurtado will continuously grasp for air.</span></span></div></div>Anuj Malhotrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02502413090811247862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805326092630306229.post-82814823760946829152016-07-05T15:57:00.000-07:002016-07-05T15:57:03.550-07:00Land, levelled<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">A piece I wrote a long time ago, when I was 20, at the start of what one may identify as a tendency towards film criticism - at any rate, an immense initiation.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">---</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In the final scene of the film, there are two white dots, placed in a vast, endless green expanse; as one dot paces towards the other to attain collision, the other paces to avoid it. And even as the one, hesitant of the two, rushes to escape the frame, the inevitability of their communion remains obvious. It is a motion reminiscent of watching a distant red body in slow-motion free fall, floating in its descent, ambling towards the ground at its gingerly pace, delaying the invariable through its stubbornness, causing doubtfulness as to its final destination, and yet, unable to avoid its eventual end. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">&nbsp;</span></o:p><span style="font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;, sans-serif;">It is the story of a film director, making his film in an area of Iran ravaged by an earthquake only recently. We begin with him facing the camera and informing the audience about his intentions as a filmmaker, informing them also, of his status of being on the verge of an audition for the girl who will play the role of the female protagonist in his film.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">A viewer, when faced with the momentous occasion of watching <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Through the Olive Trees, </i></b>be warned that he is witness, infact, to two films. The film of Abbas Kiarostami, and the film of the film director within the film. For the first twenty minutes of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Through the Olive Trees</i></b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, </i>the major concern remains the film director’s film – the film-within-the-film. As he goes to a local school, scanning it for prospective actresses, or as we become the subjective owner of the film's perspective&nbsp;which takes us on a literal journey on a tread muddy village path, overlapped with voiceovers about a recently unemployed man requesting a woman working in the film to get him a role; the film director’s film is the central issue. We are watching the making of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">his</i> film, as made by Kiarostami. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As we go along, however, a conflict arises, as we begin observing a clear distinction between Kiarostami’s film, and the film director’s film. Through tricks of structure, and cleverly revealing camera angles, Kiarostami strives to distance <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">his </i>film from the film of the film director. Both the films begin, simultaneously, to distinguish, and to melt, from/into each other. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 144.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />The distinctions between them lie in their style of shooting, with Kiarostami employing his usual off-screen wizardry, long unbroken conversations within cars, a more dynamic style of cutting; and letting the filmmaker’s film be shot through a camera that is inherently static, shot after shot, take after take, obstinate in its desire to stay put, and shooting the scene before it in the most minimalist style possible. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The two films, however, face a conjunction in the primary object of their gaze : the developing relationship between a mason, Hossein, and a young, recently orphaned Tarareh. He, staunch in his persistent effort to get her to marry him, and she, persistent in her effort to reveal no clear answer. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">That slowly, and gradually, both the films move towards mixing into one harmonious whole, thus, not only blurring the line between reality and fiction, but also eliminating the entire concept of conflict between two distinct bodies, is also the central function of the film’s depiction of the earthquake as an event that diffuses the hierarchy inherent within the rural Iranian society, and brings all the people, classes, the rich and the poor, the homeless and those with homes, and all such distinctions; down to a same level. At a harmonious, united single plane, where people across such inane divisions, meet and, perhaps, though open to dispute, marry. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As Hossein says in one scene to the film director, “Those with homes should marry the ones without the homes, so that we all become equal”. Equality, as such, remains one of the central motives of the film. Equality, or the subjugation of such boundaries, lines, divisions, borders, distinctions, as such between various entities. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The aforementioned final shot of the film, thus also becomes the equalizer, the leveler, the symbol of the earthquake, which in literal, as well as figurative terms, has ‘flattened’ the hierarchy, so that now, everyone, is at the same level. The mason Hossein is a dot in the plane, chasing the home owner, devout Muslim Tarareh, the other dot across it. They are united in the expanse between them. They are together. 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mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p><br /></o:p></div><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CNsVj88-Wek/V3w57UIfhMI/AAAAAAAAHcA/eexGxhMAIfcbwCpilSBRa2La_2uFkSLTwCLcB/s1600/Kiarostami.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CNsVj88-Wek/V3w57UIfhMI/AAAAAAAAHcA/eexGxhMAIfcbwCpilSBRa2La_2uFkSLTwCLcB/s320/Kiarostami.jpg" width="260" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br /></div>Anuj Malhotrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02502413090811247862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805326092630306229.post-11497056861836860142015-08-06T02:04:00.001-07:002015-08-06T02:04:51.771-07:00Jobbin'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: black;"></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6smOKZuTRvM/VcMhtLlg0EI/AAAAAAAAFxc/m6ti-eaOzvw/s1600/vlcsnap-2011-07-12-01h38m45s21.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="268" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6smOKZuTRvM/VcMhtLlg0EI/AAAAAAAAFxc/m6ti-eaOzvw/s320/vlcsnap-2011-07-12-01h38m45s21.png" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">For the past seven months or so, I have been engaged in writing weekly reviews of theatrical releases (Hollywood titles) for </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Asian Age</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">. The film society I represent and help run, <a href="http://www.lightcube.in/">Lightcube</a>, was approached by the paper to help with the content for its Cultural Section and two of us volunteered to boot up. The initial couple of weeks were difficult and we needed to be led by-hand by the editors, since our languid, contemplative writing style – largely cultivated by the limitless geography of an online page that spoils us all at one time or the other – didn’t quite fit in with the paper’s straight-shooting strategy. We have since resolved our differences, and the assignment has remained enjoyable. Apart from the usual, natural inferences from a proclamation of this sort: absence of editorial intervention, freedom to develop a style, the privilege of an honest opinion – there are valuable lessons too. Some of these, below:</span><br /><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>In newsprint, one must write with the certainty of a glass smashing against the wall.</li><li>To extend the analogy, the critical voice must function with the specific brevity of a dollar-store hitman revealing his recruiter’s name right before he is thrown off the rooftop.</li><li>Criticism in the papers is a form that must function in awareness of a history that exists entirely outside of the page it is printed on, or even, of the film which is its object. As a result, the film that concerns it must exist in its eyes, ‘after the fact’, or ‘as a consequence’: cinema’s been around for a hundred years, and ‘as a consequence’ of this, the film, too.</li><li>This enables the critic to employ the ‘givens’ of cinema: iconographies, genres, narrative habits, tropes, clichés – to construct a lineage or even more significantly, a vocabulary he may now share with his reader, and the film to be illuminated by the light of a movie screen.</li><li>It also helps the critic deal in shorthand, definitives, flourishes, etc.</li><li>Since all criticism is ultimately about ideas, the real challenge of landlocked newspaper columns is not a volume of ideas, but their density.</li><li>As a result, the process of their assimilation assumes grave significance - a critic (as I presume, a writer of any sort) must cultivate an intimacy with his toolkit (for me, a thick diary wrapped in flesh-coloured textured paper, a needle-point ball pen; material attributes that lend meaning to the ritual) and a strict routine (mostly: Friday morning show: sparse population, mostly lovers; a place to sit, the position of the diary, the tenor of typing, etc.)</li></ol><ol style="text-align: left;"></ol><ol style="text-align: left;"></ol><ol style="text-align: left;"></ol><ol style="text-align: left;"></ol><ol style="text-align: left;"></ol><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%; text-align: justify;">My only grouse is the presentation of the writing on the website (punctuation’s amiss; no real paragraph breaks; italicized content always shows up roman). I suppose this also is the perfect opportunity to mention the late Stanley Kaufmann (discovered recently through a friend’s introduction), whose clear prose for </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The New Republic</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%; text-align: justify;"> is an extremely useful learning tool.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"><br />Excerpts from a few reviews below; full versions <a href="http://www.asianage.com/search/google?cx=013820002199282987441%3A9get-t4bw1y&amp;cof=FORID%3A11&amp;query=anuj+malhotra&amp;op=Search&amp;form_build_id=form-24269c013807b595735b46d77b9d1e00&amp;form_id=google_cse_searchbox_form">here</a>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">The Vatican Tapes </span></i></b><span style="line-height: 115%;">(Mark Neveldine, 2015)</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">The Vatican Tapes </span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;">seems to labour under a yearning for authentication; it is the sort of ghost story that must validate its own stature by prefixing the central narrative with a fabrication: ‘…this is a true story’. To this effect, it employs various tools that do not automatically belong to an ordinary, dime-a-dozen possession drama: snippets of television interviews with Vatican priests, video-replay monitors, an elaborate archive of the antichrist’s activity and straight up in the opening, an invocation of papal authority (‘Pope Francis has admitted that there is a devil.’) While these inclusions are all well-intentioned, a horror film works best when it remains unmindful of the implausibility of the events contained within it – when it seeks instead to first address an entirely presupposed criticism, it has doubled-over into the trap.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Ant-Man </span></i></b><span style="line-height: 115%;">(Peyton Reed, 2015)</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">There is still ambition in how Reed, Russell Carpenter (his cinematographer) and the film’s VFX team imagine sequences of its super-shrunk hero negotiating different terrains up-close: there are chase sequences <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">inside </i>lawn-grass, a paragliding jump from a plane, a heist that begins inside a water-pipe, etc. As a result, there is a serious consideration of the physical laws that govern motion inside these diverse environments; there is also an interest in textures and surfaces, and therefore, in the level of detail with which they are rendered or recreated. This is a useful loan from Pixar’s animated films, which also feature miniature-sized characters moving through various settings – but the influence of Disney (which owns both Pixar and Marvel) writs its influence even larger on the film: in the final showdown, the hero and the villain engage in a pint-sized duel atop a moving toy-train; we witness the entire affair from the perspective of the only child present in the film, Lang’s daughter, Cassie.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Pitch Perfect 2 </span></i></b><span style="line-height: 115%;">(Elizabeth Banks, 2015)</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">First-timer Elizabeth Banks’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pitch Perfect 2</i> is a teen-drama with profound life-lessons and capital-t themes: characters learn to let go; or fall in love; or grow up; or discover their voices, etc., but one that is distilled through – very curiously – a late 90s, early 00s, Anna Faris-tone of self-reflexive, absurdist parody. As a result, irony abounds, nothing is sincere. Each scene cancels itself out, each moment of sentimentality is summarily deflated and nothing is really meant to mean much. Consider a brief moment in the final third of the film: Fat Amy (written as an obviously politically incorrect stereotype; played by Rebel Wilson) has an epiphany around nighttime campfire. She <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is in love </i>with a guy who she had turned down earlier in the film, so she decides to act on the impulse. She gets up, declares her intention to be with him and begins to make a symbolic, meaningless run, which is promptly cut short when – a concealed booby trap scoops her up and leaves her suspended in mid-air. This is a perfect metaphor for the writing in the film, which organises a big, dramatic event only to eventually convert it into a gag. <br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Inside Out </span></i></b><span style="line-height: 115%;">(Pete Docter, 2015)</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Pixar’s roster is full of films that exhibit their interest in the rendering of diverse environments (a filmography which therefore resembles the studio’s animators’ personal bucket-list): there is water (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Finding Nemo</i>), the sky <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">(Up</i>), the space (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wall E)</i>, dusty valley (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cars</i>) and normal, suburban houses (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Toy Story</i>). Traditionally, the greatness of Pixar’s animation resides in the photorealism of their animated universes; in the manner in which these retain the physical laws of the actual world. The reason <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Inside Out</i> is a remarkable departure is because it sets itself inside an environment that is entirely imagined – the human mind – and then sets to invent a governing logic completely indigenous to it. This allows Docter and his team to create sequences of startling (and on occasion, disorienting) imagination: one such, set inside a facility that abstracts/deconstructs thoughts and therefore, causes our protagonists to lose their shape, become formless and almost disappear, is a standout. But there are others: scenes set inside Riley’s subconscious, in her imagination, atop her train of thought, or on a studio lot where dreams are produced by a movie-crew - are excellent examples. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Entourage </span></i></b><span style="line-height: 115%;">(Doug Ellin, 2015)</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Television, by nature, is a reservoir of mythologies – (successful) shows and series usually have a considerable run, often lasting many years (or more poetically: seasons). This allows them to cultivate an autonomous fictional universe with indigenous logic, icons, rituals, running gags and of course, personalities. I suspect the major audience for a film like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Entourage</i>– the section that it is made <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">for</i> – are the existing fans of the show, individuals well-versed with the rules of this universe. As a result, the manner in which the film is constructed (and therefore, the experience of watching it in a theatre) is identifiably tribal: a movie for those who can finish its lines for it – and strangely ceremonial, in that it feels like watching TV in public.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Jurassic World</span></i></b><span style="line-height: 115%;"> (Colin Trevorrow, 2015)</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">This single line isn’t the only instance – the film employs strategic imagery to actually extend Claire’s theory: operators in the control room watch hordes of faceless, anonymous people roam around the park’s premises <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">en masse</i> on multi-screen displays; or when a great white is devoured whole by a super-gargantuan water dinosaur, the same public goes silly with awe. The manner in which director Colin Trevorrow frames their collective daze is interesting: they sit in front of a giant glass-screen that causes their faces to flicker. They could very well be watching a film, much like us. It is in moments like this, when the film is self-reflexive, nearly confessional, that it is at its best.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">The Age of Adaline </span></i></b><span style="line-height: 115%;">(Lee Toland Krieger, 2015)</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">The first and the final ten minutes of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Age of Adaline</i> – a completely whack amalgamation of b-movie science and cross-generational romance – are dense with ultra slo-mo sequences set in outer space. These are overlaid with monotone narration that declares the premise of the film scientifically plausible. It is a routine that belongs to the crudest tradition of movie sci-fi: a booming, omnipresent voice that validates the existence of the film’s universe from the outside (a technique appropriated from the newsreel).The film’s decision to adopt this method is significant, since it helps the title exhibit an age-old belief resident in American film: sequences of grand cosmic occurrence and scientific advance exist ultimately to service the littlest, most particular of human tendencies; to love, and be loved. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Maggie </span></i></b><span style="line-height: 115%;">(Henry Hobson, 2015)</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">In the lack of any real event (but with a runtime to fill), Hobson devotes his skill instead to genre-based iconography: overcast, dingy skies; damp-wood, lightless interiors; extreme-close-ups of Marguerite's eyes, cheeks, fingers, toes and whispered, deathly-sounding proclamations. These result in an ironical fetishisation of the very genre he is trying to lament, but atleast accounts for the relentless atmosphere of death and grief that rests heavily on the film.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Poltergeist </span></i></b><span style="line-height: 115%;">(Gil Kenan, 2015)</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Late into the final third of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Poltergeist</i> – a remake of 1982’s horror classic about real-estate sharks and vengeful television signals – a little boy sends a drone-mounted camera on a trek through the netherworld: a realm of lost, wronged, pissed souls lathered in ectoplasm. The camera floats through this ‘space’, relaying to the boy (and to the adults who surround him, and in turn, to us) what it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sees</i> on its merry jaunt through the ghost-world. This is a sequence of remarkable imagination, particularly in how it provides the mythical, nearly always invisible area of housing-horror movies: the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">actual</i> portion of the house colonized by ghosts – a physical, material form. Therefore, characters can (and do) navigate it, jog through it, touch it and film it.</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Danny Collins </span></i></b><span style="line-height: 115%;">(Dan Fogelman, 2015)</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">The biggest, even radical accomplishment of the film is in how it resolves the crisis for its lead character. Unlike, say, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Wrestler</i>, which features a romantic, impractical return to the ring for the rejected protagonist, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Danny Collins</i>sees its rockstar make peace with his own widely circulated, saleable brand-image, if only for the larger well-being of his family.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Playing it Cool </span></i></b><span style="line-height: 115%;">(Justin Reardon, 2015)</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Romantic comedies do not generally make this a point of discussion – seeing as how the old adage of everything being fair in love goes – but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Playing it Cool </i>displays a special accomplishment here: it features an excellent scene where the writer’s best friend finally dismantles his convenient cover of self-pity and helplessness to instead comment, ‘You are so self-absorbed.’ Lesser romantic films are never as truthful about their leads. They spend their runtimes valourising those in love, but the fact of this movie’s lead character’s profession: a writer, who falls in love for the purpose of research – helps it examine just how selfish and self-aggrandizing being in love can be. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Furious 7 </span></i></b><span style="line-height: 115%;">(James Wan, 2015)</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">A group of characters who define themselves largely through martial nomenclature: ‘chief’, ‘captain’, ‘leader’; divide themselves into specialist positions: the drivers, foot soldiers, spies, technicians; drop off into ‘enemy’ territories with parachutes from choppers and finally, mutter battlefield-slogans to each other: ‘a war is coming’, ‘I don’t have friends, I have family.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Dragon Blade </span></i></b><span style="line-height: 115%;">(Daniel Lee, 2015)</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Jackie Chan permeates through diverse commercial arrangements – international co-productions, Hollywood funded brocoms, Chinese blockbusters – as some sort of an establishment figure; an ambassador, so to say. In his most well-known films, he plays state-figures: cops, mostly; emperor’s warrior; a fighter trained in the shaolin-traditions – and protects national treasures (sculptures, medallions, paintings, the ambassador’s daughter) from an overt threat that results from an external, foreign influence. In this, Chan’s figure recurs throughout his filmography as a political cipher – an individual that an entire country, an economic superpower uses to distill and explain its attitudes towards globalization.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel </span></i></b><span style="line-height: 115%;">(John Madden, 2015)</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Movies these days seem increasingly tailored for a younger audience: teenagers, young professionals – and therefore, there are various stories of redemption, reclamation and rebirth, but this one’s not one of them. It establishes as its central premise the terminal nature of life and the finite nature of available time, thereby making it contingent upon its ageing, elderly central characters to fulfill their wishes: of love, company, legacy and dignity – before they die. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Chapplie </span></i></b><span style="line-height: 115%;">(Neil Blomkamp, 2015)</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">The film’s purpose is spelled out in through instruction-manual, didactic scenes (Yolandie says to Chappie: ‘You are what you are inside’, Ninja compares a dead dog and a living, eating one to illustrate how survival is difficult in the world outside), but this isn’t a problem, because<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Chappie</i> is operational only as a fantasy that pretends on the outside to be a heavy-set, science-fiction drama. This is operative knowledge for a film that discusses as its major themes the difference between interior and exterior surfaces, the deceit of appearances and transhumanism (and therefore, the futility of container-bodies).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Love, Rosie </span></i></b><span style="line-height: 115%;">(Christian Ditter, 2015)</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Take, for instance, the scene where Rosie, an eighteen year old holds her newborn against her chest for the first time. There is a shallow-focus, advertising-imagery montage of her smiling, feeling her maternal urge rise, but instead of granting its audience the experience of witnessing the transformation of its lead character, it places a convenient text-super: ‘five years later’. This is meant to represent change, and evolution, but the real challenge, I suppose, is to actually show it – to let your actor perform it, to let your story tell it. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">The Boy Next Door </span></i></b><span style="line-height: 115%;">(Rob Cohen, 2015)</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">It is nimble and interesting – a tract-housing drama conducted through the most traditional, classical event in film: people looking at each other through open windows. The lead pair talks about&nbsp;<i>The Iliad</i>&nbsp;(campy dramas always aspire to high-art; a character may be a painter, or there is a murder in the museum). There is shared curiosity between the leads, temptation, the film gets racy – but then relents too easily by letting its leads consummate their stillborn relationship.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Taken 3</span></i></b><span style="line-height: 115%;"> (Olivier Megaton, 2015)</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">A lot of the film, for instance, is really about Bryan Mills (but really, Liam Neeson; the actor-character split hardly visible, considering Mills is all physiognomy, not performance) wading like a specter through an urban jungle - concrete roads, parking lots, glass office buildings, high-rise penthouses, shopping mall toilets, elevator shafts, CCTV camera images, hi-fidelity microphones – all booby-trapped, placed to ensure his capture. Neck strained out, as if he slept badly last night; back erect like a wooden plank; the weight of his overly long upper body balanced by two feet straddling outwards; face in a constant lament – much of the pleasure of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Taken</i> series comes therefore from Neeson and how he is filmed walking, turning around quiet, suspect wall-corners or casually slapping a tango to get a word or two out of him.</span></div><br /></div>Anuj Malhotrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02502413090811247862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805326092630306229.post-80431655129109800662014-01-18T12:55:00.000-08:002014-01-18T12:55:02.185-08:00Action/Reaction<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In Kenji Misumi's <i>Sword Devil </i>(1965), the lead protagonist, Hanpei ('Han' for spot; 'pei' for the lower social class he belongs to) becomes a practitioner of Lai (a draw-sword art; his teacher's only lesson: draw, kill, put back) midway through the film. Towards the end, a change in the lordship of the clan he belongs to means that his earlier performance of his duty towards the clan, which constituted murders of his fellow clansmen themselves, is now seen as a grand crime that must be avenged. He is tricked by various other members of the clan into coming alone to the flower-garden he has himself sowed; they propose his murder, he tells them it's on. In a grand sword-roulette that follows (and that predicts Kenji's later masterpieces with the <i>Lone Wolf</i>&nbsp;series), Hanpei takes them all one by one. This sort of a one-against-all within the same two-dimensional plane is an idea that must have inspired later manga, as well as, in no small measure, the famous side-scroller brawl in <i>Oldboy</i>&nbsp;(2003). Anyways, most of them get murdered by Hanpei's sword, but then he is wounded himself, and it is at this point that the brawl breaks down into a splendid formation within the frame: Hanpei places his sword back and bends over, his hands to his knees, to regain breath and just rest for a little bit. His opponents see this as an opportunity to gain on him, they move closer to him in scavenger-circles with much ill-intent. But as it goes with most Kenji Misumi fights, the protagonist will never accept a graceless, crowded brawl; instead, he prefers a series of dignified one-on-ones. And so the stage for a near-perfect demonstration of the sheer speed of his prowess is set. As he rests, one of his opponents makes a quick advance and Hanpei responds with great ferocity.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VuE5-HY2dBQ/UtrpYzp-mxI/AAAAAAAACoo/inIO0RwL7O0/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-18-12h32m49s78.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VuE5-HY2dBQ/UtrpYzp-mxI/AAAAAAAACoo/inIO0RwL7O0/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-18-12h32m49s78.png" height="161" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--574OMDaQp8/Utrpa9EtmWI/AAAAAAAACow/fcPDrEdbjbc/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-18-12h32m18s11.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--574OMDaQp8/Utrpa9EtmWI/AAAAAAAACow/fcPDrEdbjbc/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-18-12h32m18s11.png" height="162" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>Anuj Malhotrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02502413090811247862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805326092630306229.post-29072998235694604822014-01-11T15:21:00.000-08:002014-01-11T22:39:59.405-08:002013, Logbook<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Following are the best films I saw in 2013(not of 2013), ones that were first-time watches. In alphabetical order:</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>Eligibility:</b> Those not included in the <a href="http://projectorhead.in/archives/eight/projectorhead-2012-almanac/">PH Almanac 2012</a>; features</span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">--</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Act of Killing, The</i> (2013) / Joshua Oppenheimer</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Blow Out</i> (1982) / Brian De Palma</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Boudu Saved from Drowning</i> (1932) / Jean Renoir</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Casque D' Or</i> (1953) / Jacques Becker</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Cameraman, The</i> (1928) / Edward Sedgwick, Buster Keaton</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Chienne, La</i> (1931) / Jean Renoir</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Conjuring, The</i> (2013) / James Wan</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Flying Circus, The</i> (1912) / Alfred Lind</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Go Go Tales</i> (2008) / Abel Ferrara</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Gladiator, The</i> (1986, TV) / Abel Ferrara</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Klute</i> (1971) / Alan J. Pakula</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Kummatty</i> (1978) / Aravindan</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>L. 627</i> (1991) / Bertrand Tavernier</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Long Goodbye, The</i> (1974) / Robert Altman</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Man There Was, A</i> (1917) / Victor Sjostrom</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Marnie (1964)</i> / Alfred Hitchcock</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>M. Hulot's Holiday</i> (1953) / Jacques Tati</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Ms. 45 (1981)</i> / Abel Ferrara</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Ordet (1955)</i> / Carl Th. Dreyer</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Passion of Joan of Arc, The</i> (1928) / Carl Th. Dreyer</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Tanner '88</i> (1988, TV) / Robert Altman</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Throw of the Dice</i> (1927) / Franz Osten</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>To Be or Not to Be</i> (1941) / Ernst Lubitsch</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Two Lovers</i> (2008) / James Gray</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Underworld, U.S.A</i> (1953) / Samuel Fuller</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Unspeakable Act, The</i> (2013) / Dan Sallitt</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Yakuza Papers, The</i> (1973-74) / Kinji Fukasaku</span><br /><br /></div>Anuj Malhotrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02502413090811247862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805326092630306229.post-26724617692595663562014-01-05T10:31:00.000-08:002014-01-05T10:31:05.307-08:00The Wrestlers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rZbOoTsxtRk/UsmjUhT6dfI/AAAAAAAAClM/PF6NuNk0VVM/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-01-05-22h04m42s153.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rZbOoTsxtRk/UsmjUhT6dfI/AAAAAAAAClM/PF6NuNk0VVM/s320/vlcsnap-2014-01-05-22h04m42s153.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>The Lonely (1999) /</b> Jean Paul Civeyrac</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iVy4BoaiUuA/Usmj96tfmGI/AAAAAAAAClU/2ApYFDzCvlc/s1600/The+Wrestlers,+George+Luks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="231" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iVy4BoaiUuA/Usmj96tfmGI/AAAAAAAAClU/2ApYFDzCvlc/s320/The+Wrestlers,+George+Luks.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>The Wrestlers (1905) / </b>George Luks</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></div>Anuj Malhotrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02502413090811247862noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805326092630306229.post-12472008917799847732013-09-28T00:17:00.002-07:002013-09-28T00:17:18.763-07:00Suffering of the Devoted<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In a remarkable scene typical of Bauer's filmography, as Lily recovers from her operation and slowly opens her eyes to discover that she has gained sight, she sees Gregoriy in front of her and mistakes him for Vadim, the doctor who actually operated upon her and is in sincere love with her. Seeped in gratitude and happiness, she gives her heart away to Gregoriy, while poor Vadim lingers in the background, distraught at this peculiar undoing of his love. Characters apart from Lily all choose to preserve this error in recognition - Lily's only recently recovered from an operation and the mental trauma of a correction may send her into relapse. This sounds convenient, but Bauer is convinced of a universe where the devoted with suffer - this is visible in almost all his major films; his is a poetry of a world not fair or just in anyway, but open instead to the arbitrariness that is a yield of an irony-filled circumstance and often inexplicable forces of human impulse and feeling. The scene in question is a perfect example of Bauer's cinema - a microcosm, if you will - because it is full of two particularities. The first, the utter irony of the situation, wherein a man helps a woman regain physical, sensory sight which results, instead, in blinding her to his love. The second of course is inherent in Bauer's direction of scenes. Major moments or twists-of-fate in Baueur are not as much a result of events transpiring or similar apocalypses, but of the unpredictability of human movement: a posture, a brief strut across the room, a minor shuffling of position or a wrongly placed limb.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In the scene, as soon as the operation is complete and Lily slowly begins to open her eyes, Vadim quickly moves from besides her to his apparatus in the background of the frame to fetch a comforting lotion for her; Gregoriy on the other hand moves quickly towards Lily to comfort her, replacing Vadim in his original position so to say. This movement across the floor where Vadim (literally) recedes into the background and Gregoriy is summoned to the fore leads to the central misunderstanding of the film: Lily opens her eyes, sees Gregoriy and falls in love with him. But the eccentric dance does not stop here. Vadim, grief-stricken and a loser in love, slowly saunters to the side of Lily, takes her hand and kisses it in resignation. Lily, so much in love now, is completely oblivious to the tragedy that her newly acquired sight has woven. Gregoriy, equally saddened by his inadvertent usurping of his brother's position, recedes back into the background, where he stares into a void that exists behind the frame, with his back towards us. Lily's mother, sympathetic to Vadim's situation but helpless nonetheless, attempts to comfort him but failing, turns to leave the scene, perhaps unable to bear the misfortune that resides within it. It is at this point that Bauer causes his actors to arrange themselves in what is a truly remarkable pose: Lily, seated on the sofa and in love, is exulting with happiness; her mother is exiting the frame from the right - slitting the frame right in the middle are the two brothers, placed in a two-dimensional frame to appear as if they are the same creature, mirror-images of each other, tentacles of the same organism. Their heads are bowed down in grief but it is Vadim whose face is visible to us; the insinuation is clear: it is he whose suffering will be evident to us and it is he whose physical being will become easily replaceable by that of his brother - the blocking within a frame presenting a clear account of Lily's confusion.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AYOnRUKknNU/UkaCKgcxXZI/AAAAAAAACUA/lwa6CniyQzw/s1600/Bauer1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="286" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AYOnRUKknNU/UkaCKgcxXZI/AAAAAAAACUA/lwa6CniyQzw/s400/Bauer1.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>The Happiness of Eternal Night (1915)</b> / Yevgeni Bauer</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>Anuj Malhotrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02502413090811247862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805326092630306229.post-91659451565726764632013-07-20T11:29:00.000-07:002013-07-20T13:16:15.273-07:00Three Dead Bodies<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Often in Robert Altman's films, characters who die submerge into a neighbouring water body: it's as if they dissolve into liquid and lose their material nature, significance.</span></div><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vZMuSxWED0c/UerVYaH7-qI/AAAAAAAACGk/pz_cN0nSBgw/s1600/vlcsnap-2013-07-20-11h13m37s107.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="136" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vZMuSxWED0c/UerVYaH7-qI/AAAAAAAACGk/pz_cN0nSBgw/s320/vlcsnap-2013-07-20-11h13m37s107.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b>McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971)</b> / Robert Altman</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1K6gFV9ESo0/UerVYLJ6CLI/AAAAAAAACGg/6IWK-eBK9vY/s1600/vlcsnap-2013-07-20-11h07m28s28.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="142" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1K6gFV9ESo0/UerVYLJ6CLI/AAAAAAAACGg/6IWK-eBK9vY/s320/vlcsnap-2013-07-20-11h07m28s28.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b>The Long Goodbye (1974)</b> / Robert Altman</span></td></tr></tbody></table><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0CAXswfjJHM/UerVYNmxAlI/AAAAAAAACGo/saMhlKTasaQ/s1600/vlcsnap-2013-07-20-11h17m57s165.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="186" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0CAXswfjJHM/UerVYNmxAlI/AAAAAAAACGo/saMhlKTasaQ/s320/vlcsnap-2013-07-20-11h17m57s165.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b>The Player (1992)</b> / Robert Altman</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></div>Anuj Malhotrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02502413090811247862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805326092630306229.post-59571444171695385442013-07-20T00:15:00.000-07:002013-07-21T07:32:00.469-07:00The Revival of the Dead<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9ScpBSUkoSs/Ueo4jFcCAsI/AAAAAAAACGU/o51ZaKu72U8/s1600/vlcsnap-2013-03-02-13h35m13s19.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9ScpBSUkoSs/Ueo4jFcCAsI/AAAAAAAACGU/o51ZaKu72U8/s1600/vlcsnap-2013-03-02-13h35m13s19.png" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Obsession (1976) /</b> Brian De Palma</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />One is not prone to discussing the class-consciousness prevalent in De Palma’s work; the excitement of his films seems to derive as much from the perverseness of his directorial design (particularly; in terms of the central plot, the mood of the piece and the various rhythms/double-rhythms), but also, from (what seems like an) inevitable, and yet, unforeseen engagement of societal classes. In <i>Obsession</i>, for instance, De Palma revises Hitchcock’s <i>Vertigo </i>by entirely severing the original story’s connection with dreams, magic or enigma at-large, and re-depositing it instead in a world of open manipulation, schemers and hustlers – where the reincarnation is no longer the result of one man’s obsessive fantasy, but of his business partner’s (unbelievably) elaborate plan to annex the protagonist’s mind, and through it, his money. In short, De Palma airlifts <i>Vertigo</i> from Hitchcock’s private architecture and places it, as such, in America. Two great achievements of <i>Obsession</i>: the first is De Palma’s recognition of the plausibility of the central plot itself; a man obsessed with a dead lover/wife spots another woman who looks just like her and aims, through his own set of eccentric and aloof habits, to reincarnate the deceased in the alive. While Hitchcock’s film’s working class detective can hardly, in a ‘real’ world afford to devote most of his life to the peculiar pursuit of this young girl who bears an uncanny resemblance with his lost love, De Palma corrects this technicality by rendering the same plot as a holiday film. The rich businessman goes to Italy for a business meeting and spots this replica (what’s more, she works as a restoration artist, how cute!) – tells his partner to trudge on along to America while he will stay on for a few more days. These ‘few more days’ being the point of De Palma’s larger awareness (which he posits in <i>Blow Out </i>as a complete theory); that only a multimillionaire on a holiday can savour the <i>luxury</i> (as opposed to the hope-agony of Scottie in <i>Vertigo</i>) of rediscovering, perhaps, a lost love. In finishing therefore, this triumvirate (with <i>Laura</i>, and of course, <i>Vertigo</i>), De Palma’s point is made, i.e., only three types of people can spend their lives obsessed with the dead: detectives, rich men on a holiday and of course, at a larger level, cinephiles.</span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Obsession</i>’s larger achievement is in the final shot of the film, when De Palma paints the final stroke over his <i>Vertigo</i> restoration – he dispenses with the wonder inherent in the circular tracking shot that captures the resurrection/reunion in <i>Vertigo</i> and replaces it instead with the bottom-line reality of such a complex affair: when the man and the woman enter the world-ending embrace in <i>Obsession</i>, she overdramatically and in a high-pitched voice, squeals: ‘Daddy! Oh daddy!’ And this is really how De Palma summarises for us the whole Hitchcock film; as some sort of a modern variation of the old <i>Frankenstein</i>-legend, wherein the reproduced girl is no longer a myth, and she does not see the fanatic whose obsessiveness makes her existence possible as her lover, but as her father, her progenitor and her creator ( of course, this is a terribly sentimental moment; imagine the Monster calling Frankenstein his father, but also a bit of a joke on ol’ Jimmy’s age in <i>Vertigo</i>) . Two other significant facts about this scene; it is set in the symbol of concrete, <i>real </i>and practical contemporary existence, the airport, and is thereby relocated from the dreamy, neon-lit hotel room of the Hitchcock film, and lastly, this scene <i>ends</i> the film (unlike <i>Vertigo</i>, where Scottie must suffer till he can exterminate this agent of recurrence herself). This is because the larger irony of the project – the story of a man restoring an object from the past <i>being filmed by</i>a man restoring an object from the past – is not lost on De Palma, and therefore, just like Scottie, he must end eternal recurrence with his own piece. How? By ensuring that the reunion scene is the final scene of his story, so that by the time the end credits begin to roll, the ghosts of an unhappy past are entirely exorcised.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div>Anuj Malhotrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02502413090811247862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805326092630306229.post-5517080199986780162013-06-01T13:30:00.000-07:002013-06-01T13:31:32.024-07:00Quality<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">From an interview with <i>Eye Magazine</i>, an excerpt:</span><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_Eu1SyQhkTs/UapZU-qZ5LI/AAAAAAAACAU/D6liHV30eGU/s1600/Three+Times.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="220" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_Eu1SyQhkTs/UapZU-qZ5LI/AAAAAAAACAU/D6liHV30eGU/s400/Three+Times.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Three Times (2005) /</b>&nbsp;Hou Hsiao-Hsien<br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><b><br />R. Roger Remington:</b> How do you define quality?<br /></span><br /><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #666666; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>Massimo Vignelli:</b> Quality, like Modernism, is an attitude, which means that one does not go below a certain standard. Quality is a way of living, a life attitude and a constant fight to eliminate any hint of vulgarity from one’s mind. This is a constant job of enormous proportions because the bombardment that we continuously have, the amount of seduction that we receive from life, makes this fight against crudeness a very heavy job. It’s like the devil. I suppose the priest would call [vulgarity] the devil, and call quality the state of holiness.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #666666; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Quality is when you know that you have reached a high level in your work, when it really sings, when it touches you, when it responds. Quality is a level of intellectual elegance that is unmatched in other forms. When you see that there is no more vulgarity in it, you’ve got the sense of quality. So quality is something that you can achieve by continuously refining your mind through exposure to things which are the best manifestation of people that came before you, or are around you. This is what you obtain by nourishing yourself away from anything which has vulgarity in it. Quality is when you solve all of the problems that you have to solve in a way that is beyond the expected. So it is the sum of many things, and the answer to many searches. Quality is a by-product of passion, curiosity, intensity and professionalism.</span></div></div>Anuj Malhotrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02502413090811247862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805326092630306229.post-29857316302149236612013-05-21T13:12:00.000-07:002013-05-21T13:12:02.023-07:00Artist Manifesto #1: Jean Renoir<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In order to consider film seriously, one would have to first accept the precept that film directors are <i>artists</i>&nbsp;(or at the very least, believers in the possibilities of art)&nbsp;- once established, it is easier to locate, as in the work of all artists, an idea resident in their marrow. Often times, exclusively.<br /></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uw_0rPLT01w/UZvUlP7eZmI/AAAAAAAAB_0/54Eh0qtGqYE/s1600/vlcsnap-2013-05-19-10h52m06s118.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="296" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uw_0rPLT01w/UZvUlP7eZmI/AAAAAAAAB_0/54Eh0qtGqYE/s400/vlcsnap-2013-05-19-10h52m06s118.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9N-T35uYc2g/UZvUl6nUC0I/AAAAAAAAB_8/RVP3H_N0N-g/s1600/vlcsnap-2013-05-19-10h52m16s250.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="296" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9N-T35uYc2g/UZvUl6nUC0I/AAAAAAAAB_8/RVP3H_N0N-g/s400/vlcsnap-2013-05-19-10h52m16s250.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-B20jjpZRgM0/UZvUmVWAQdI/AAAAAAAACAE/cTgji4bwnbw/s1600/vlcsnap-2013-05-19-10h52m23s69.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="296" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-B20jjpZRgM0/UZvUmVWAQdI/AAAAAAAACAE/cTgji4bwnbw/s400/vlcsnap-2013-05-19-10h52m23s69.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>La Chienne (1931) /</b> Jean Renoir</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>Anuj Malhotrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02502413090811247862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805326092630306229.post-2560849644271489622013-05-05T13:52:00.001-07:002013-05-05T22:06:02.766-07:00A Dominatrix and Her Client<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OFhG-yvuxpE/UYbF0utmFGI/AAAAAAAAB_A/-Hcvt2R4auY/s1600/Detour.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="303" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OFhG-yvuxpE/UYbF0utmFGI/AAAAAAAAB_A/-Hcvt2R4auY/s400/Detour.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Detour (1945) /</b> Edgar G. Ulmer</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Both of Ulmer’s two well-known films feature a detour that is of enormous consequence within the events of the narrative – in essence, both <i>Black Cat</i> and <i>Detour</i> exist as ‘what if’ situations, i.e., the fundamental truth of their being coerces the audience to posit an alternative narrative permutation as hypothesis. But there is a catch: in <i>Black Cat</i>, the accident of the vehicle at night that forces the tourists to stray from their original path and deposit themselves as guests at the house of Hjalmar Poelzig is merely a geographical diversion; naive young American lovers unwittingly drift off into unknown, sinister alien territory. The film is bathed in similar tourist-paranoia; the Eastern-Europeans are creeps, played by actors who most famously embody (in other films) two of the most notorious pop-culture villains and their accents are their chainsaws. Even so, it isn’t as moralising as the backpacker-horror films of American 70s or those of the Australian 00s – it is still sympathetic towards its protagonists and doesn'</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">t punish them for straying off the </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">normal</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">or the </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">tread</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> path (horror for all its transgressions is a conservative genre; comedy for all its assurances, a radical one).&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It is the other film which exists as a great moral thesis - an unreliable narrator and a loser pianist Al Roberts intimates to us the details of his journey from New York to Hollywood to marry his dull girlfriend, aspiring actress Sue. On the way, he says, everything that can go wrong, does. A man gives him a lift and later, dies in the car itself. He decides to take off with the car, having assumed the identity of the dead man and with the intention of disposing off the car once he makes it to Hollywood, but on the way, he meets Vera, a woman who happens to see through his masquerade and threatens to blow his cover unless he becomes her accomplice in crime. Later in their hotel room, he causes the murder of Vera too - by <i>accident</i>, he insists. Ofcourse, you could take a lot of this on face-value as a viewer and believe Roberts’ version, but if one were to put it under scrutiny, it reveals very willing participation in all the scandal that he comes across. Firstly, with his passenger dead, it doesn’t even occur to him to perhaps locate a hospital; instead, he disposes his body off like a real pro and takes off merrily with the money and the car. Then, he offers a pick Vera up at the petrol station (why, you charmer!) – even later, when he discovers the black heart that beats inside the woman, he decides to go along for the ride, like a willing accomplice, never using force or coercion or blackmail or simple wits to get out of the situation. Instead, he <i>submits</i> to her – theirs is a keen psycho-sexual relationship, that of a dominatrix indulging her client; after all, both of them are role-playing too. In that, he only pretends to be a victim of fate (‘no matter which way you run, fate will find a way to trip you’, goes one of his thousand laments, he is a pretty whiny jerk) but actually, he brings it upon himself.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />The operative question here, therefore, could be as to what the titular 'detour'&nbsp;indicates. It is certainly not a geographical one, considering he moves rather steadily and singularly towards Hollywood. It is also not a detour from his original plans, because he adapts them as he goes along - he is in it for the ride, an extended bachelor party before he becomes a routine American. Thus, it is a detour from conventional morality – a diversion from traditional notions of faithfulness and loyalty, of a rejection of avarice and care for the fellow man – Al Roberts is a cheater, a deserter and a conman, even if he’d rather pretend otherwise. The period of the film’s production also ensures that he is punished for this detour – if it were the 70s, Al and Vera would have escaped with the money to Mexico.&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></div></div>Anuj Malhotrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02502413090811247862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805326092630306229.post-49763627941887772502013-04-11T01:00:00.000-07:002013-04-11T01:06:08.699-07:00Two-Faced Jerks<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yE8_pOezWZ8/UWZtUk5R8mI/AAAAAAAAB-Q/e-Zs3wGVwJE/s1600/vlcsnap-2013-04-11-00h58m55s101.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yE8_pOezWZ8/UWZtUk5R8mI/AAAAAAAAB-Q/e-Zs3wGVwJE/s400/vlcsnap-2013-04-11-00h58m55s101.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Underworld U.S.A (1961)</b> <b>/</b> Samuel Fuller</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">There is a sequence of immense cruelty in Fuller’s film – a dying man who has murdered the protagonist’s father asks him for forgiveness, ‘I gotta die with a clean slate’, he tells him and clutches onto the younger, more alive man’s coat-lapel as a plea. In return, the protagonist, who has gotten himself implicated (and therefore, in prison) repeatedly over the years only to preserve proximity with the dying man (since he’s been serving a life-term), asks for the names of the other three men involved in the murder. He presses onto the older man to the point of blackmail, repeatedly reminding him of possible post-death retribution in case he does not give his partners up. With the terms of the barter agreeable to both parties involved, the old man proceeds to rat. He then demands of the other man to keep his side of the bargain, at which point, the younger man takes the dying man’s hand and severs it from his coat-lapel, letting him die with blood on his hands. He does the dishonourable act by lying to a man on his deathbed – but the thing with Fuller is, there isn’t much honour at any rate, there is no glory or pride too; there is only dignity and individuals trying to salvage whatever little of it they can. The protagonist’s been the liar in this scene, the two-faced jerk, but who’s to say about the old man prepared to divulge the identities of his partners for an entirely selfish purpose – only because he’s dying and well, death means there aren’t any stakes involved anymore. Fuller will confuse the issue even more; the old man’s desire for forgiveness is entirely hokey – he is, after all, the man who murdered a father in front of his child and ended his possibilities for a normal adulthood. In that, Fuller is clear that the dying man’s more successful murdering partners – Gela, Gunther and Smith – who are honest (and even proud) of their criminal excursions are more admirable than this sniveling old man who believes an afterlife remission will save him.&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></div></div>Anuj Malhotrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02502413090811247862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805326092630306229.post-37269220449798720942013-04-10T13:56:00.000-07:002013-04-10T13:58:04.801-07:00Reanimation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="color: #595959; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Projectorhead</span><i style="color: #595959; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, the online film journal I also run, recently published its first yearly Almanac</i><span style="color: #595959; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, </span><i style="color: #595959; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">which featured writers from around the world recollecting the previous year in cinema for them.</i><span style="color: #595959; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">&nbsp;</span><i style="color: #595959; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Those interested can read it <a href="http://www.projectorhead.in/eight/almanac_2012.html">here</a>.</i><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #595959;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gfUzb1ZJ-Ro/UWXQp4Z7WSI/AAAAAAAAB-A/QW94-qBT9Bc/s1600/vlcsnap-2013-01-12-03h30m39s117.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="167" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gfUzb1ZJ-Ro/UWXQp4Z7WSI/AAAAAAAAB-A/QW94-qBT9Bc/s400/vlcsnap-2013-01-12-03h30m39s117.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Two Lovers (2012)</b> / James Gray</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #595959; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />I also contributed an essay on James Gray, called <i>The Private World of Mr. Gray</i>&nbsp;to Bangalore-based film magazine&nbsp;<i>Deep Focus Cinema</i>&nbsp;for their Mar-May 2013 issue. It's admirable that the magazine's out in print, because that is a blue moon in the skies of Indian cinephilia now. For those interested in the magazine or in subscriptions, you can learn more at the magazine's <a href="http://www.deepfocusonline.com/">site</a>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #595959;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #595959;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">An excerpt:</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #595959;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #595959;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">James Gray’s films are set inside a practical world.&nbsp; A world whose rules aren’t dictated by a romantic commitment to the exalted yet equivocal notions of morality, loyalty, brotherhood, belonging or even love – this statement has larger implications than one may imagine; it is not enough for characters in a Gray film to carve their existences through broad strokes of subverting conventional gestures or patterns of behaviour, they must do <i>more</i> – subversion is, after all, an act that still depends on a relative existence– the subversive first requires an object to apply his radical impulse to. The men and women in Gray’s films, instead, exist in some of a movie-vacuum, they do not resemble or <i>seem like</i> people in other movies – they seem plucked out of Gray’s experiences, people he has met, some he has dated, a few he hates, others that he loves and one that he sees in the mirror. The choices they make or the decisions they take, which so often propel Gray’s unusual, even <i>peculiar</i> narratives forward, aren’t influenced by commitments to higher principles or grand (but hokey) moral devices, but by the strange and overwhelming force of the human impulse – as a result, these characters can come across as unreasonable, downright stupid, imperfect idiots and yet, at the risk of a cliché, more human. Perhaps that is why epithets that are most commonly attached to Gray’s films are ‘classical’, ‘old-fashioned’, ‘vintage’ and such - apart from the fact that the aesthetic construction of his films is undoubtedly influenced by fundamental principles of old-timey filmmaking (camera on tripod, economy of shots, meticulous cutting, narratives driven by repartees, soundtracks that swell up,&nbsp;</span></span><span style="color: #595959; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">sodium-vapour lighting), there is also the truth that audiences will deem as being ‘classical’ any behaviour in a film that they can relate to. Why? Because beyond its conventional definition (classical: anything that can be classified), the word is also meant to evoke the feeling of an object that existed back in the past, in </span><i style="color: #595959; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">our </i><span style="color: #595959; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">past, essentially, anything that we can identify by the virtue of already having seen it. But this is a confusion: Gray’s characters are not relatable (and therefore, ‘classical’) because they existed in the past or, as is sometimes alleged, belong to ‘a 30s MGM film’, but because in them, audiences in front of a movie-screen can see reflections of themselves: people on a Gray screen are people like they </span><i style="color: #595959; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">are</i><span style="color: #595959; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, down to the marrow – they do not exist as gross exaggerations or underplayed variations – they are direct renders.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #595959; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div></div>Anuj Malhotrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02502413090811247862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805326092630306229.post-77389573966720822013-02-22T19:26:00.002-08:002013-02-22T19:27:38.167-08:00In Hindsight - III<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VK5_0bwdIp0/USg2As6rJnI/AAAAAAAAB8E/nDZHQvZny04/s1600/vlcsnap-2013-02-22-11h44m42s83.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="165" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VK5_0bwdIp0/USg2As6rJnI/AAAAAAAAB8E/nDZHQvZny04/s400/vlcsnap-2013-02-22-11h44m42s83.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Navajo Joe (1966)</b> / Sergio Corbucci</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The precept of the 'In Hindsight' series can be read&nbsp;</span><i><a href="http://www.floatingzoetropes.blogspot.in/2011/06/in-hindsight-ii.html"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">here</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span></i></div>Anuj Malhotrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02502413090811247862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805326092630306229.post-25319646061620037752013-02-14T06:36:00.000-08:002013-02-14T06:37:12.125-08:00The Story of an Awkward Friendship<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i style="color: #595959; line-height: 14.44444465637207px;">This is the full transcript of a piece I did for Kolkata-based magazine </i><span style="color: #595959; line-height: 14.44444465637207px;"><a href="http://goodnewstab.com/"><b>Good News Tab</b></a></span><i style="color: #595959; line-height: 14.44444465637207px;">&nbsp;on literary-to-cinema adaptations; with a special focus on the Academy Awards and big-scorer, Ang Lee's </i><span style="color: #595959; line-height: 14.44444465637207px;">Life of Pi.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #595959; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">---<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #595959; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #595959; line-height: 115%;">The most recent film by Ang Lee, </span><i style="color: #595959; line-height: 115%;">Life of Pi</i><span style="color: #595959; line-height: 115%;">, is the film of a believer. Adapted from an early 00s book (a literary sensation, a prize-winner) of the same name by Yann Martel, it’s the sort of film which was, for the last ten years or so, as close to getting made as it was to not – several directors were attached to the project, several writers were hired to do drafts, several actors were cast (and even as much as shot their scenes), but much like the journey of the protagonist in the book/film itself, </span><i style="color: #595959; line-height: 115%;">the project</i><span style="color: #595959; line-height: 115%;"> didn’t seem any closer to a finish. One could locate interesting parallels between the legendary journeys (</span><i style="color: #595959; line-height: 115%;">journey</i><span style="color: #595959; line-height: 115%;">; that great narrative trope which allows for physical as well as spiritual dislocation) undertaken by the book/film’s hero, Pi-the-sailorman and studio executive Elizabeth Gabler, who through this decade of uncertainty, kept hopes of an eventual adaptation alive. One could extend this analogy further and claim that the production of a film, </span><i style="color: #595959; line-height: 115%;">any </i><span style="color: #595959; line-height: 115%;">film is as much a question of faith as it is of a reason, as much a question of belief as it of pragmatism – like the journey of Pi, the effort involved in finishing a film is a theological epic in itself. And in this case, there are gold coins at the end of both the rainbows: Pi discovers God, Gabler’s film has eleven Oscar nominations.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #595959; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #595959; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">But then again, <i>Life of Pi</i> is the sort of film the Academy likes.&nbsp; The eighty-five year old institution likes what most eighty-five year olds like: pleasant, comforting grand tales that reassure them of a world full of optimism, generosity of spirit and eventually, light-at-the-end-of-all-tunnels. It is a world where bleak caste and race-related issues disappear entirely or atleast, by the time the film ends, resolve their personal issues amicably. The Academy also doesn’t like films that provide showboating opportunities for a single guy – a film shouldn’t be imbued with the personality of a single star-director, so too much <i>auteurism</i> and what-not is a big no; instead, the institution prefers films which provide a fertile ground for the visible convocation of diverse talent. The film, in order to score big at the Oscars, must feature evidently great cinematography, dialogue that is replete with scene-ending one-liners and majestic monologues, gut-wrenching performances and a story that traverses generations, if not eras. The Academy likes it if it can <i>feel</i> that a lot of people have worked on the film together – the winner of the Best Film at the end should seem like a summation of the night’s ceremony, of all the awarded categories put into a mix that then <i>yields</i> this one single film. Consider this, in the recent past (sample size: last 20 years) films that have won the Best Film trophy include: <i>Slumdog Millionaire</i> (2008), <i>Million Dollar Baby</i> (2004), <i>The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King</i> (2003), <i>A Beautiful Mind </i>(2001), <i>The English Patient </i>(1996), <i>Forrest Gump</i>(1994), <i>Schindler’s List </i>(1993), <i>The Silence of the Lambs</i> (1991). <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #595959; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #595959; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">All of these films essentially function on the same performative scale or exist, as it is, on an altogether consistent plane; they feature an overarching evolving narrative, an intriguing premise, a lead protagonist who must undertake an arduous journey (and in the process of reaching his destination, indulge in self-discovery) and a grand hokey statement at the end. Apart from these macro-level systems, most of them also share micro-level similarities: large ensemble casts populated by a just proportion of known and unknown faces, a socio-political debate (gender politics, disability, euthanasia, disease, poverty; all covered) and a story that is narrated through a very literary framing device: the flashback (one guy’s the ancient mariner, the second the poet) . Now, the reason a film like <i>Life of Pi</i> may very well make it at the Academy is because it does not in any way subvert this trend, if anything, it extends it. But that’s fine, not every film or work of art should be a gesture in subversion, to be able to expand a tradition or consummate its promise is in and by itself, a noble aim. And <i>Life of Pi</i> achieves this – it is nothing new and yet, in whatever it does that is old, it is very good. What may also work in the favour of <i>Pi</i> is that, just like all the titles in the long-list above, it is the adaptation of a literary work into the cinema.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #595959; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #595959; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Literature and cinema share a peculiar; part-paradoxical, part-synchronous, part-filial relationship, the first being an ancient artform, unalterable and permanent, ink impressed firmly onto the page, that is thought to have reached the end of a period in the first quarter of the 20<sup>th</sup> century – this is around the same time when cinema would begin to take its first steps as a medium capable of <i>specificity </i>(that is, a unique existence, torn from its aesthetic predecessors in painting, photography and literature, free of loans or debts). A number of commentators around the same time would begin pondering over this matter and contemplate the question of cinema’s existence as a medium capable of its own grammar, its own idioms and through these, its own expression. In her 1925 essay on the cinema entitled, quite simply, <i><span style="background: white;">The Cinema</span></i><span style="background: white;">, author Virginia Woolf observed,</span> ‘<span style="background: white;">For instance, at a performance of <i>Dr. Caligari </i>(author’s note: a 1919 classic of the cinema) the other day a shadow shaped like a tadpole suddenly appeared at one corner of the screen. It swelled to an immense size, quivered, bulged, and sank back again into nonentity. For a moment it seemed to embody some monstrous diseased imagination of the lunatic's brain. For a moment it seemed as if thought could be conveyed by shape more effectively than by words. The monstrous quivering tadpole seemed to be fear itself, and not the statement 'I am afraid'.’ <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #595959; line-height: 115%;"><span style="background: white;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #595959; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">One may say that this is a rather simplistic resolution of the crisis, of the constant tug-of-war between the two media – and yet, for the year of its publication, it is rather remarkable. It is also not entirely false to claim that if anything, film has still not severed entirely its ties with literature – that images all over the world are still employed merely to illustrate text and to only be vehicles of meaning that are propelled, still, by words themselves. Insofar as one may think that cinema’s great ambition should be to tell its stories through only the <i>visible</i> – through visuals, pictures, photos, stills, slideshows, frames, illustrations – and in the case of <i>Life of Pi</i>, through computer-generated imagery, the film exists as an interesting prototype of the crucial differences between the two human forms of art. It frames its story familiarly – one dude with a writer’s block goes to another mysterious guy (Irrfan Khan, grappling in equal measures with an unimportant role and with English) and asks him to tell him this great story that he has heard somewhere he can tell – the second guy launches into an epic flashback which forms the central narrative of the film. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #595959; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #595959; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This, as one may recall, is very similar to another film made by a foreign big-name director in India that scored huge at the Oscars; 2008’s <i>Slumdog Millionaire.</i> In that film, our lead protagonist appears on a quiz-show and answers each question with extreme dexterity – but this is only a structural-ruse. Actually, each question’s like a portal into his past. We know as an audience that this guy’s only a tea-seller (with impeccable English), so how does he know all these answers? The film volunteers that each question he is asked relates somehow to an incident from his past life, the experience of which he summons to respond to the question. The film is told, therefore, almost entirely in a series of flashbacks and a series of very freaky co-incidences. It is also a great picaresque story, an ode to street-smartness and the virtue of <i>experience</i> – if anyone ever needs to make a case for the street-smart hustlers over the bookworms, this film’s on their team. More crucially to our present discussion, this film too, like <i>Life of Pi, </i>is based on a book: author Vikas Swaroop’s best-seller, <i>Q &amp; A. </i>But there are other similarities in these two Irrfan Khan starrers: in both the films, the sequences which feature wordy tracts, conversations, dialogue exchanges, voiceovers or narrations weigh heavily onto the film. They are heavy-handed, badly played (in no less reason because of the discomfort of most Indian actors with English) and staged unimaginatively. On the other hand, scenes that contain portions of visual splendor and screensaver-beauty (or oddness) are handled with much caution, crafted meticulously and presented with much fervor. This is especially the case with <i>Life of Pi</i>, where the narrative travels back and forth between scenes of the teenager-Pie, shipwrecked in middle of the vast illuminated ocean, stranded on a boat with a CGI tiger and middle-aged Pie, sitting in an average American-living room, living out his life as an average dad of two, husband of one.&nbsp; <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #595959; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #595959; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">One may argue that this contrast is pertinent to the whole idea of the film – that in order to reach a position of eminent and comfortable, almost dull stability in life, this character has to first undergo an arduous journey – but that belies the great proven truth about cinema – great directors can make sequences of ordinariness look spectacular. It’s interesting that when he started out in Taiwan, these chamber-drama types set inside modern tract houses was director Ang Lee’s specialty as well; this is before he moved on to awesome, outwardly spectacular films that eventually made him famous (starting with, perhaps, 2000’s <i>Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon</i>). By the time he directs <i>Life of Pi</i>, Lee now spends his skill as a visual stylist entirely on sequences set in the outdoors, in the great open sea – this, he achieves through clever variations in aspect ratios (like a guitarist alternating between effects/ sounds/amplifications, Lee alternates between square and rectangular formats), colour temperatures of his images (the sea is sometimes a honey-coloured warm glow, sometimes a turquoise), emphatic special-effects (the sequence of the shipwreck is overwhelming) and of course, very effective CGI. Claudio Miranda, the DoP on his film is plucked straight from another film with masterful image-manipulation and CGI, another literary adaptation: 2008’s <i>The Curious Case of Benjamin Button</i> – incidentally, that film featured major sequences with&nbsp; its protagonist stuck in the middle of a sea-typhoon – this, perhaps, may have led to Miranda’s hiring. <i>Pi</i> is anticipated to sweep most of the technical awards at the Oscars and for good reason too. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #595959; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #595959; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The film is supposed to be a very faithful adaptation of the Martel’s book – one may assume therefore that the book describes textually all these sequences of nature’s fury and simultaneously, its immense enigma and beauty. In that, Martel’s writing is entirely of the sort that Henry James demanded in the early 20<sup>th</sup>century from authors when he said that contemporary literature must grow to more <i>visual</i> or atleast, <i>visually imaginable</i>. This is an interesting proposition, for if an author’s work is merely to describe a scene in detail so lucid that it can be <i>visualised</i>by his reader – is the job of the cinema director who then adapts this writing not akin to a police sketch-artist, who translates a vague verbal description by the witness into a visible, material, printable, copy-able form on the page? Is it not his task to expand on this ambition and not undercut the abilities of his own medium, to locate the spirit of a written passage and not its literal meaning and then to film <i>that</i>? One wonders, regardless, of how Martel’s book may have described the sequence of the storm that wrecks the ship or the carnivorous self-devouring island near the end – whether his words could convey the sense of immediate sorrow that permeates the first sequence and danger that permeates the second.&nbsp; Maybe that in fact is the crucial feature of a filmed sequence: its immediacy, its ability to pass one by and already be past in the time that a reader may take to even begin composing an imagination from the words he reads on the page.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #595959; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #595959; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">One could, however, also think of Lee’s film and its faithfulness to the words of Martel as being one <i>type</i> of adaptation - the sort where a well-known book is cautiously chosen by a studio executive (in the case of <i>Pi</i>, Gabler), optioned by the studio-heads, nurtured and tended for years at end by the property-owner because it can <i>see potential</i> – usually of the sort where the project will inevitably attract major industry-talent and trade-hype. This is to say that the moment it gets greenlit, a well-armed crew of scrawny, grown-up men will be dispatched to some corner of the world to translate a few passages from the book into sequences of vulgar scale and massive proportions – the sort that are ‘awe-inspiring, breathtaking and eye-popping’. And history is proof that a studio will blow up money if it can sense an eventual extravaganza – like bringing up a child only so that it can become the best pinch-hitter ever known. And then there is the second sort of adaptation, one where a personality-director himself first chances upon and then chooses a book he must adapt. This is usually because the director can sense more than merely an opportunity to leech on or <i>extort from </i>existing work – instead, he or she may think of the book as fertile ground; as material that facilitates a setting, a set of conditions, thematic or ideological concerns and peculiar individuals that populate its pages – this will permit him to use the book as some sort of a springboard for his own ideas. The book can then provide the empty vessel which the filmmaker can fill with entirely cinematic qualities: rhythm, mood, gestures, atmosphere, manners, quaint mood and such. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #595959; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #595959; line-height: 115%;">In a description of David Cronenberg’s <i>Cosmopolis</i>while declaring it as the best film of this year, critic <a href="http://theseventhart.info/">Srikanth Srinivasan</a>began with, ‘</span><span style="color: #595959; line-height: 115%;">'Surely, it takes a bona fide auteur like David Cronenberg to locate his signature concerns in a text – such as Don Delillo’s – that deals with ideas hitherto unexplored by him and spin out the most exciting piece of cinema this year.' I requested him over email to perhaps elaborate on this; he replied, ‘</span><span style="color: #595959; line-height: 115%;">Cronenberg's cinema hasn't directly dealt with the crises of modern capitalism, which seems to be the chief concern of Delillo’s novel…[but] it is rattling to see what Cronenberg does here: he locates a body horror narrative within a story about the absolute abstraction of capital.’ Needless to say, this is very interesting – the fact that one artist’s work facilitates the other’s or at the very least, makes it possible – it isn’t entirely a collaboration (or a collaboration at all) but it is still a relationship of simulated synthesis – the adaptation <i>extends</i> the original work, confirming that any harmonious adaptation is, atleast in one way, a living proof of the ductility of the original work itself.&nbsp; Satyajit Ray, a prolific literature-cinema translator throughout his own career (the <i>Apu </i>trilogy, <i>Jana Aranya, Devi, Teen Kanya, Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne</i> among others) wrote in his essay, ‘Notes on Filming Bibhuti Bhushan’, ‘…One can be entirely true to the spirit of Bibhuti Bhushan, retain a large measure of his […] … lyricism and humanism combined with a casual narrative structure – and yet produce a legitimate work of cinema.’ <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #595959; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #595959; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">However, there are other instances in the history of cinema too where the whole adaptation business can come across as some sort of a turf-war, with the author of the book desperately attempting to reclaim his own work from the wrenches of a star-director who is running away with it. This usually happens when an uptight author refuses to free his work from the bondage of a single meaning, the one <i>he</i> intended – it is when the author feels that its adaptation will interfere, or worse, tamper with the agenda of the original text that he takes up arms. Apart from the obvious fun-times inherent in seeing two grown up dudes trying to prove who the bigger artist is (these are always fun), this sort of dissent also points at the infrequent inability of the two media to reconcile – to reach some sort of a peaceful treaty. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #595959; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #595959; line-height: 115%;">During the shooting of <i>The Shining</i>, pop-culturist author Stephen King would often receive calls at two in the night from the film’s legendary director, Stanley Kubrick. He would pick up the phone, half-asleep and groggy: ‘Hello?’; from the other side, Kubrick would ask, ‘Hi Stephen, do you believe in God?’ The eventual no-love-lost relationship that Stephen and Stanley shared could be attributed to these creepy post-midnight interferences, but King’s problems with Kubrick’s film were greater. He said upon viewing the film, ‘I was deeply disappointed in the end result…</span><span style="color: #595959; line-height: 115%;">Not that religion has to be involved in horror, but a visceral skeptic such as Kubrick just couldn't grasp the sheer inhuman evil of The Overlook Hotel. So he looked, instead, for evil in the characters and made the film into a domestic tragedy with only vaguely supernatural overtones…it's a film by a man who thinks too much and feels too little…’&nbsp; The last bit isn’t really a very original complaint when it comes to Kubrick; regardless, it is of great interest that at the same time, King expressed a desire to film the novel himself. He did, eventually. His version, released as a mini-series in 1997 was widely panned and cited as an example of a giant in one medium taking a bite larger than he could chew. In his failure, he seemed to have vindicated Kubrick’s understanding of how his own novel should be filmed – one must do only what one is good at. There have been other cases too, such as when Alfred Hitchcock quite famously declared that the book that resulted in <i>Psycho </i>wasn’t ‘all that good to begin with’ or when <i>Forrest Gump</i> author Winston Groom, hugely dissatisfied with the (enormously successful) Hollywood adaptation of his 1986 novel began the sequel with a grudgy Gump telling the readers, ‘Don’t never let nobody make a movie out of your life’s story…’ Anyways, these are all fun-and games. At any rate, </span><span style="color: #595959; line-height: 115%;">ego-fights aren’t a new thing at all, with ego being the main propeller of the history of the modern world, so it isn’t unnatural for creators and later, propagators of an idea to develop cold feet, get insecure and fight it out as real men do: over press conferences. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #595959; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="background: white; border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0in 0in 1.0pt 0in;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: none; padding: 0in;"><span style="color: #595959; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">One would imagine that in this era of post-art, the world–at-large is looking for newer ways in which to amuse itself, keep itself stimulated and to keep the gears of civilization oiled. Technology has turned a new era where the question isn’t about possibility as much as it is about conviction – everything is possible, as long as someone believes in it. These are therefore fertile conditions for a newer form to emerge, an idea that belongs to the new world, a medium that condenses contemporary anxieties, insecurities and agitations better than any other – perhaps in this evolution, we may finally see a real, <i>complete</i>synthesis of the cinema and the literature, two awkward friends who sometimes agree to make public appearances together – if only for the benefit of their patient audiences.</span></span></div></div></div>Anuj Malhotrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02502413090811247862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805326092630306229.post-60241713366142074212013-01-26T08:50:00.000-08:002013-01-26T08:50:39.316-08:00Cascades and Fountains<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GmdhngWL8Qw/UQQJBoowmaI/AAAAAAAAB7c/NQY6yY5r588/s1600/Virginia+Woolf.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="220" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GmdhngWL8Qw/UQQJBoowmaI/AAAAAAAAB7c/NQY6yY5r588/s400/Virginia+Woolf.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 18.984375px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 18.984375px;">'Yet if so much of our thinking and feeling is connected with seeing, some residue of visual emotion which is of no use either to painter or to poet may still await the cinema. That such symbols will be quite unlike the real objects which we see before us seems highly probable. Something abstract, something which moves with controlled and conscious art, something which calls for the very slightest help from words or music to make itself intelligible, yet justly uses them subserviently—of such movements and abstractions the films may in time to come be composed. Then indeed when some new symbol for expressing thought is found, the film-maker has enormous riches at his command. The exactitude of reality and its surprising power of suggestion are to be had for the asking. Annas and Vronskys—there they are in the flesh. If into this reality he could breathe emotion, could animate the perfect form with thought, then his booty could be hauled in hand over hand. Then, as smoke pours from Vesuvius, we should be able to see thought in its wildness, in its beauty, in its oddity, pouring from men with their elbows on a table; from women with their little handbags slipping to the floor. We should see these emotions mingling together and affecting each other. We should see violent changes of emotion produced by their collision. The most fantastic contrasts could be flashed before us with a speed which the writer can only toil after in vain; the dream architecture of arches and battlements, of cascades falling and fountains rising, which sometimes visits us in sleep or shapes itself in half-darkened rooms, could be realized before our waking eyes.'&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 18.984375px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18.984375px;">&nbsp;- </span><i style="line-height: 18.984375px;"><a href="http://www.woolfonline.com/?q=essays/cinema/page1">The Cinema</a></i><span style="line-height: 18.984375px;">, Virginia Woolf</span></span></div></div>Anuj Malhotrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02502413090811247862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805326092630306229.post-31330198019671628752013-01-17T19:17:00.000-08:002013-01-17T19:18:13.617-08:00Eight<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.projectorhead.in/">Projectorhead Film Magazine</a>, an online journal I publish, and which is edited by friend/colleague Sudarshan Ramani and whose pages are filled by a number of writers I respect very much, has just issued its eighth edition. The index for Projectorhead: Eight reads something like this:</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.projectorhead.in/">www.projectorhead.in</a></span><br /><br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;"><i>All Things Come to He Who Waits</i> - Sudarshan Ramani (Editorial)</span></li><li><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;"><i>An Era of Soft Economics</i> – Gautam Valluri</span></li><li><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;"><i>The Wandering Company</i> – Hamanpreet Kaur</span></li><li><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;"><i>The Sinister Chandelier</i> – Anuj Malhotra</span></li><li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>Wes Anderson's Kingdom</i> - Sudarshan Ramani</span></li><li><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;"><i>The Real RockNRolla</i> – Satish Naidu</span></li><li><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;"><i>The Magical Cabinet of Suarteh Yrboq</i> – Rahee Punyashloka</span></li></ul><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;"><b>2012 MAMI – 14th Annual Film Festival</b></span></span><br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Top of the Heap : A Look Back at the 14th Annual Mumbai Film Festival</span></li><li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Interview with Ian Birnie</i> - Sudarshan Ramani</span></li><li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Film Restoration in Indian and Global Contexts</i></span></li></ul><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;"><br /></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>PLUS+</b></span><br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Lost in Translation: Trials and Tribulations of the Academy Award’s Best Foreign Film Category</i><b> – </b>Soham Gadre</span></li><li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i style="background-color: transparent;">Book Review</i> – Zona<b> / </b>Anamaria Dobinciuc&nbsp;</span></li><li><span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;">General Review:&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;">Independent Titles, Special Screenings and Film Festivals,&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;">Screen Diary by &nbsp;Rahee Punyashloka,&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;">Theatrical Releases<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-F4k8bxP6ETo/UPi99wXojQI/AAAAAAAAB64/CTJ-OtWqLvA/s1600/ProjectorheadEight.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: normal; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-F4k8bxP6ETo/UPi99wXojQI/AAAAAAAAB64/CTJ-OtWqLvA/s640/ProjectorheadEight.jpg" width="449" /></a></span></li></ul></div>Anuj Malhotrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02502413090811247862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805326092630306229.post-52363734591692440542013-01-12T23:26:00.002-08:002013-01-12T23:26:42.678-08:00Absences<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Insofar as one may understand cinema to be a pictorial form of communication; i.e., a medium with a number of two-dimensional surfaces, planes, areas sliding upon one another, like locomotive compartments, in a single-minded pursuit of a destination (in the case of the locomotive: a physical location, in the case of cinema's slides or frames: an abstract notion), it isn't difficult to appreciate why this pursuit is conducted both in space and time (as all pursuits must be). The fact, therefore, of a single film moving <i>with</i> time or <i>within</i> time is integral to the fulfillment of a number of ideas in film: the notion of a narrative itself is built on the central conceit of a present, its past, its immediate future, and the accompanying changes in the universe of the film within these units of time - someone comes, someone goes, others appear out-of-nowhere, more disappear, the hinges of a door come loose, skin wrinkles, the parts of a machine rust, the song on a vinyl record is over and the third song from it now plays, birds halt chirping and the crickets appear - as such, cinema always functions in a set of recurring appearances-disappearances; that it is the one artform that can engage elements of photography (after all, a picture captures not merely someone's presence, but also the absence of the rest of the world not <i>in</i> <i>it</i>), as also, of time-keeping (the ticking of a clock is the ominous soundtrack to all the transformations in the world around us). Of course, the idea in itself may seem a bit complicated, but then great filmmakers consummate it through the simplest of touches; below, two stills from a dysfunctional family from Takashi Miike's debut film, <i>Shinjuku Triad Society</i>&nbsp;(1995) - the younger dissenting brother appears for a family prayer, and as the parents pray in the foreground (the prayer itself becomes the metaphor for time, a device for keeping time), he:</span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zswtIteAPmc/UPJhR7wryXI/AAAAAAAAB6Q/I1Pup0KnFv0/s1600/vlcsnap-2013-01-06-12h57m10s247.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="172" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zswtIteAPmc/UPJhR7wryXI/AAAAAAAAB6Q/I1Pup0KnFv0/s320/vlcsnap-2013-01-06-12h57m10s247.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8PGevhLOsl8/UPJhYur0jQI/AAAAAAAAB6Y/Ax8PJoCuAzg/s1600/vlcsnap-2013-01-06-12h58m13s109.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="172" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8PGevhLOsl8/UPJhYur0jQI/AAAAAAAAB6Y/Ax8PJoCuAzg/s320/vlcsnap-2013-01-06-12h58m13s109.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /></div>Anuj Malhotrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02502413090811247862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805326092630306229.post-71481942076067883332013-01-01T21:39:00.000-08:002013-01-01T22:26:08.459-08:00A Summary<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">With this post, I complete a century on this blog, and it is an excellent co-incidence (as opposed to a devious plan) that this one also gives me an opportunity to summarise my engagement with cinema this year. I watched close to 160 titles this year, which is not much, but a relatively large percentage of those were remarkable or atleast, had permanent merit in them. Below, therefore, are the best films I watched this year (not the ones released this year, but the ones I happened to chance upon), a few images that stuck and a lengthy wishes I have for our national cinema as it were, in &nbsp;the coming years.</span></div><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dn4J3rjxL0c/UOMzAFsxLTI/AAAAAAAABrQ/f5Ku-VaBgSo/s1600/vlcsnap-2012-09-16-12h26m17s176.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="290" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dn4J3rjxL0c/UOMzAFsxLTI/AAAAAAAABrQ/f5Ku-VaBgSo/s400/vlcsnap-2012-09-16-12h26m17s176.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Touki Bouki (1973) </b>/ Djibril-Diop Mambety</span></td></tr></tbody></table><b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />Best Titles.</b><br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;"></div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">Le Trou</span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> / Jacques Becker</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog</span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> / Alfred Hitchcock</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.floatingzoetropes.blogspot.in/2012/09/images-of-colonised.html"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">Gate of Flesh</span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> / Seijun Suzuki</span></a></span></li><li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.floatingzoetropes.blogspot.in/2012_04_01_archive.html"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">Les Vampires</span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> / Louis Feuillade</span></a></span></li><li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">Marnie</span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> / Alfred Hitchcock</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://projectorhead.in/blog/?p=137"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">Antonio Gaudi</span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> / Hiroshi Teshigahara</span></a></span></li><li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler</span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> / Fritz Lang</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">Statues Also Die</span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> / Chris Marker, Alain Resnais</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">Zabriskie Point </span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;">/ Michelangelo Antonioni</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.floatingzoetropes.blogspot.in/2012/12/notes-on-few-great-titles.html"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">Cold Harvest</span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> / Isaac Florentine</span></a></span></li><li><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 23px;">À Nous la Liberté / </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 23px;">Rene Clair</span></li><li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.floatingzoetropes.blogspot.in/2012/01/pilgrim-men-and-women.html"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">Goodbye, Dragon Inn</span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> / Tsai-Ming Liang</span></a></span></li><li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">Crazy Thunder Road</span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> / Sogo Ishii</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">Monsieur Verdoux </span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;">&nbsp;/ Charlie Chaplin</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.floatingzoetropes.blogspot.in/2012/07/resurrection-loop.html"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">Sunnyside</span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> / Charlie Chaplin</span></a></span></li><li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">Attack!</span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> / Robert Aldrich</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">Muriel or The Time of Return</span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> / Alain Resnais</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">Blast of Silence</span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> / Allen Barron</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://projectorhead.in/blog/?p=121"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">The We and the I</span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> / Michel Gondry</span></a></span></li><li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">Touki Bouki</span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> / Djibril-Diop Mambety</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">Eyes Without a Face</span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> / Georges Franju</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">This is Not a Film</span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> / Jafar Panahi</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">Hugo</span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> / Martin Scorsese</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.floatingzoetropes.blogspot.in/2012/01/fullerfrancois.html"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">Shock Corridor</span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> / Samuel Fuller</span></a></span></li><li><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy</span></span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> / Tomas Alfredson</span></span></li></ol><div><b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />Notable, Too.</b></div><div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://projectorhead.in/blog/?p=53"><b>&nbsp;&nbsp;</b><span style="font-style: italic; line-height: 115%;">Outrage Beyond</span></a><span style="line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://projectorhead.in/blog/?p=53"> / Takeshi Kitano</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.floatingzoetropes.blogspot.in/2012/12/notes-on-few-great-titles.html">&nbsp; 13 Assassins </a></span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.floatingzoetropes.blogspot.in/2012/12/notes-on-few-great-titles.html">/ Takashi Miike</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">&nbsp; Pauvre Pierrot</span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> / Emile Reynaud<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.floatingzoetropes.blogspot.in/2012/01/shimura-trick.html">&nbsp; I Live in Fear</a></span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.floatingzoetropes.blogspot.in/2012/01/shimura-trick.html"> / Akira Kurosawa</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">&nbsp;The Beiderbecke Affair</span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> / David Reynolds, Frank W. Smith<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.floatingzoetropes.blogspot.in/2012/02/skeleton.html">&nbsp;We Need to Talk about Kevin</a></span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.floatingzoetropes.blogspot.in/2012/02/skeleton.html"> / Lynne Ramsay</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">&nbsp;The Dreyfus Affair</span></span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> / Georges Melies&nbsp;</span></span><br /><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">&nbsp;<i>The Yakuza / </i>Sydney Pollack</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><b>Wishlist 2013</b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This isn't meant to be a manifesto or a call-to-arms, merely the expression of a series of very personal wishes for Indian cinema as it only now begins to enter the 21st Century. While a few titles did gather international appreciation this year, I believe a more permanent change will happen only when we have a setup in place that:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">a) facilitates independent film distribution/production/</span><wbr style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"></wbr>exhibition; this will include funding agencies dedicated exclusively to fund ideas of independent film producers - and they can be both offline and online. These may include funding websites such as Kickstarter or Indiegogo, but more essentially, agencies like the<span class="apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span><span class="il"><span style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">NFDC</span></span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">&nbsp;</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">of yore, development labs and grants that are dedicated to the cause of alternative filmmaking. A serious movement has been made in this direction in recent times by the revived NFDC (which was under a serious threat of being closed in 2009) but much more needs to be done – funding agencies will have to cast their net wider, so that the representation at international festivals is multilingual as well as multi-ethnic, which really is one of the unique features of our cinema.<span class="apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span>In this regard, the support given to Haobam Paban Kumar, who made an important political film in <i>AFSPA 1958</i> is an interesting case-study. To extend this, this will also entail a support-system, in terms of funding, exhibition and distribution of documentary filmmaking in the country, which is where some of the most interesting work is being conducted right now. Filmmakers such as Rajesh Jala, Amlan Dutta (and his brother), Faiza Ahmed Khan, Haobam Paban Kumar and of course, Anand Patwardhan can only gain from consistent support. In this case, an agency like PSBT or Doordarshan may also like to revise its methods of granting funds only to established filmmakers and not to younger, lesser known faces who may have important areas to direct their cameras at but not biological age to represent their prospective quality, and helps institute,<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; line-height: 115%;">c) repertory theatres, independent art-house cinemas, revival houses that are dedicated to programming of contemporary/modern/classic world cinema retrospectives, screenings and rental stores (again, whether online or offline; and rental stores, not streaming sites) of obscure alternative titles that are made available in a legitimate and legal way - not a storehouse of piracy for even if I subscribe to it out of compulsion, their quality is always suspect and well, it is illegal so it is not a part of a regular framework.&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #222222; line-height: 115%;"><br /><br /><span style="background-color: white;">d) a set of societies for film critics such as the international FIPRESCI (t</span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 17.77777862548828px;">he Indian chapter is represented currently by individuals who were excellent critics back in the day, but aren't active anymore)</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">&nbsp;but the more local film society circles in cities such as Austin, Boston, New York, Los Angeles - thereby allowing criticism to exist as a fully-formed profession rather than a weekly response to the 'latest releases' - in that, specific grants/institutions should be allocated to aspiring film critics and the work of established serious writing on film should be routinely awarded. As such, there should also be a network of critics that organises frequent seminars, discussions, student exchange groups that these critics interact with, and a general filmmaker-critic interaction that is literally absent in the country (the new Baradwaj Rangan- Mani Ratnam interview book is an excellent starting point).</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222; line-height: 115%;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br />e) in the extension of above, print journals/magazines/platforms that are involved in the serious and sustained publication of serious writing on cinema.<span class="apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span>In this regard, &nbsp;<i>Cinemaya</i>which was run for 21 years, <i>Deep Focus</i>which has recently been revived in Bangalore, or film journals such as <i>Close-Up </i>or <i>Movement,</i> which were active during the 1960s and the 70s could be important precedents.<br /><br />f) an agency instituted and much more essentially, funded for the preservation of our cinematic legacy – in this regard, the work in the recent years of a government organ like NFAI has been commendable, but truth be told, I believe it was only under the able leadership of the late Mr. Vijay Jadhav, who died end 2010, that the NFAI could really fulfill the promise of its early days under Mr. P.K. Nair. As such, there is a need for more awareness, more involvement of the youth and needless to say, formal courses at film schools/institutes for people interested in film preservation (I know they have instituted a 6 weeks course but that is nothing, and means nothing). Currently, the NFAI has 11000 titles with it and Films Division (who still haven’t released a boxset of the films of S Sukhdev, SNS Sastry and Pramod Pati) have another 8000 films. 4000-5000 titles made in the country since the dawn of cinema are irreparably and permanently lost while around 17000 titles are in active circulation. But what’s more important is the urgent need to institute a culture of curiosity in regards to old titles – even if NFAI does have prints of silent films, it is not as if enough demand is being made to make them available to the viewing public. The screening of <i>Throw of Dice</i> (1928) at Trafalgar Square which was attended by 10000 individuals should be an important point of discussion – it means film-lovers in this country are curious about India’s silent film. In this regard, the work of historian B.D.Garga and critic Chidananda Dasgupta should be read and circulated widely. Important steps have been taken in the recent past with the issue of the DVD boxset of three of Phalke’s films (out of which, <i>Krishnajanama</i> (1919) is even available on Youtube) and also a number of screenings of<i> Raja Harishchandra</i> (1913) to mark the centenary of that film, but more needs to be done. &nbsp;A government funded autonomous agency, perhaps NFAI itself, should now be funded to build its own underground vault of our cinema and should be given enough money to help us locate our films from world over and get those prints back home.<span class="apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span><br /><br />g) which brings me to the point of the need of film education - film as a subject should be included in school curriculum, but even at the level of higher education, there should be an opportunity for the students to seriously consider cinema as a profession and not a passing hobby - this will happen only when there is a proper film school &nbsp;that is cheap/affordable/government subsidised and creates professionals with individuals sensibilities and not individuals with professional sensibilities. In this case, looking at the Lodz Film School (which FTII was initially modelled on alongwith VGIK, Moscow), VGIK Moscow and of course, the best of 'em all, the Beijing Film Academy will help immensely. Also film schools and film education should be exempted from five-year plans - because these need a sustainable fifty-year plan to make any real change.<span class="apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span><br /><br />h) they will need to reorganise and revitalise the FFSI (Federation of Film Societies in India) - nothing interesting is happening on the Film Society front in the country, except in the Western Region where individuals like Sudhir Nandgaonkar are instrumental in putting up interesting programmes in colleges/universities as well as organizing film appreciation workshops. The FFSI main headquarters in Delhi are housed in one room and the rules for registering a society are archaic. An impetus from the central government wherein a society is setup in every city (if not every school, ala FILMCLUB in UK) is much needed. The older film societies such as Chitralekha in Kerala, Suchitra in Bangalore, the now-defunct Katha Center for Film Studies in Mumbai and Cine-Central need to be given further impetus to refresh their objectives and spread out to other parts of the nation with their experience. In this regard, we also need more serious film festivals - the work of the Baburao Painter Society in the Kolhapur Intn't Film Festival (and on a side, the Pune Intn'l Film Festival), Jan Sanskriti Manch in Gorakhpur and Gurpal Singh/Swagata Sen in Puri is exemplary - more such festivals should be organised with a regular incentive of both income and social change. The International Film Festival of Goa should quickly be severed from the government and made autonomous with an ambitious film professional who should be selected after a series of selection rounds as the director of the festival.<span class="apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span></span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222; line-height: 115%;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span class="apple-converted-space"><br /></span></span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /><b>A Few Resonant Images</b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ah0nuUJ9OKk/UONhkNQ6zUI/AAAAAAAABsk/oKf0IzZbxvQ/s1600/vlcsnap-2012-02-04-23h57m49s18.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="135" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ah0nuUJ9OKk/UONhkNQ6zUI/AAAAAAAABsk/oKf0IzZbxvQ/s320/vlcsnap-2012-02-04-23h57m49s18.png" width="320" /></a></div></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9_SgXeOQeug/UONhprR3DyI/AAAAAAAABss/hM1DVdkDb5I/s1600/vlcsnap-2012-02-11-14h19m27s19.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="155" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9_SgXeOQeug/UONhprR3DyI/AAAAAAAABss/hM1DVdkDb5I/s320/vlcsnap-2012-02-11-14h19m27s19.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eVuFq0o9lVU/UONht78DWGI/AAAAAAAABs0/lOM90CoeBuk/s1600/vlcsnap-2012-02-11-15h28m53s201.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="155" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eVuFq0o9lVU/UONht78DWGI/AAAAAAAABs0/lOM90CoeBuk/s320/vlcsnap-2012-02-11-15h28m53s201.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; 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text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-C5L1vMx7c08/UONmS30TIPI/AAAAAAAAB4s/Qzk2O9g2nI4/s1600/vlcsnap-2012-12-15-12h54m38s179.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="241" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-C5L1vMx7c08/UONmS30TIPI/AAAAAAAAB4s/Qzk2O9g2nI4/s320/vlcsnap-2012-12-15-12h54m38s179.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-k0c41x94rnY/UONmbhAHQmI/AAAAAAAAB48/pD2k-nXwk28/s1600/vlcsnap-2012-12-29-20h55m10s239.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="131" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-k0c41x94rnY/UONmbhAHQmI/AAAAAAAAB48/pD2k-nXwk28/s320/vlcsnap-2012-12-29-20h55m10s239.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-A4t9nT8fblQ/UONiAqVKpII/AAAAAAAABtc/B5IMY1quGZY/s1600/vlcsnap-2012-02-19-10h52m45s122.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="170" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-A4t9nT8fblQ/UONiAqVKpII/AAAAAAAABtc/B5IMY1quGZY/s320/vlcsnap-2012-02-19-10h52m45s122.png" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div></div>Anuj Malhotrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02502413090811247862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805326092630306229.post-59431187284645101662012-12-31T06:18:00.000-08:002013-01-01T05:50:35.187-08:00Notes on a Few Great Titles<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The year’s drawing out to a close and it’s featured a number of revelatory moments in terms of my engagement with cinema. My viewing of films was abundant and fertile – if not in regards to the number of films I watched, then definitely for the variety I did. I will issue an year-end summary where I will list the best of the year, but till then, very brief notes on three great recent films (in this case, recent being post-1990):</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7WPzzPawY_M/UOGbEZjvJGI/AAAAAAAABqs/bjUQ5BK3JVo/s1600/vlcsnap-2012-11-19-12h05m33s255.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="215" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7WPzzPawY_M/UOGbEZjvJGI/AAAAAAAABqs/bjUQ5BK3JVo/s400/vlcsnap-2012-11-19-12h05m33s255.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>Limits of Control</i></b><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> </i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">(2009) / Jim Jarmusch</span></div><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I did an essay a little-time ago about how most truly great contemporary films reflect on the uber-globalised world we inhabit right now as also on the anxieties, insecurities, modified forms of communication, political implications and benefits of this new arrangement. With his last film, however, Jarmusch extends that discussion even further logically – for him, a discussion of globalization must yield a discussion of cultural pluralism, destruction of conventional symbols (and subsequently, the prejudices they result in), understanding (which is always so much tougher than </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">just </i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">acceptance) and only through all this, a truly globalised world, which exists not merely as a notion, but as a successful concept. Each character in the film battles/defies pre-determined conceptions about themselves; these are formed as a result of conditioning and awareness that result from the primary tools that humans use to recognise each other: languages and appearances (costume, colour of skin, hair colour, nakedness). Before each exchange, the first question the lead character is asked is: ‘Do you speak Spanish’? – he doesn’t, but that will not, </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">must</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">not hamper exchange. As he negotiates the Spanish-town geography, a few children approach him and ask him: ‘Are you an American gangster?’ Why do they ask him that? Why do we wonder the same? It is because we are </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">conditioned</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> to believe that a lone, serious, lanky shape that wanders the streets of a modern city must belong to a criminal – it is what cinema has taught us, it is what we believe. The man-with-no-name is an ancient creature, anachronistic in today’s world; a man devoid of an identity is an inconceivable creature in this newly porous world, for if he has no passport, no driving license, no social media existence, no political affiliation, how do we identify him? And if there is no identification, how can there be any categorization? The world arranges itself into a single, universal culture at a pace so swift that man, the eternally rationally creature, will look for ways in which to arrange and classify this increasingly torrential flow of information, people, ideologies, social structures and the like – for the greatest horror of mankind is to exist in a world that is mysterious to him, that he cannot understand, that he cannot master. But as Jarmusch posits, the more we attempt to control the world we live in, the more it will escape us: if there is anything that has limits, it is not <i>how much </i>of an<i>&nbsp;</i>enigma the world can be, but the control we have over its eternal malleability. An image we imagine to be a painting will convert into an </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">actual</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">scenery, a naked girl will turn into a movie-reference, a small, tiny bistro will suddenly turn into a giant interior location the moment the lead character will turn his head to look left (after all, in cinema, it is the direction of the human eyeline that illuminates dark corners and reveals new spaces; human vision is like torchlight in cinema, it is the ancient discoverer) and the ‘American gangster’ lead, in the ultimate scene of the film, will recede into a toilet, discard his flashy suit, wear a jumper with the Senegalese flag on it and walk out of the building (thereby breaking our movie-audience perception of him). In the final seconds, the film, hitherto shot with the camera firmly and professionally set on the tripod, will suddenly attain a vitality when someone will remove it from the clamp and swerve it a little to allow it to register a soft-focus, badly lit blurry image of the exterior – right in front of our eyes, the entire universe of the film will self-destruct. Nothing, in a world that changes so quickly, will exist as we know it.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hdUUj8JQJAY/UOGbuaZhzkI/AAAAAAAABq0/9_pd5YlPY90/s1600/vlcsnap-2012-11-15-09h54m12s75.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="302" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hdUUj8JQJAY/UOGbuaZhzkI/AAAAAAAABq0/9_pd5YlPY90/s400/vlcsnap-2012-11-15-09h54m12s75.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b><i><br /></i></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b><i>Cold Harvest</i></b>(1999) / Isaac Florentine<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">This is the sort of cinema-folding-back-onto-itself masterpiece that is rare to see in the 21</span><sup style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">st</sup><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> century, where everyone seems desperate to move forward and break away (some aesthetically, some through the use of technology and finally, some by bullshitting their way through). This Florentine masterpiece treads genre-based iconographies and movie-universes the way most films can only tread, say, a scene or a narrative.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In a post-apocalyptic world, people wear dusters, enter salons, talk tough, sweat profusely, sling guns, duel like cowboys (there is a final showdown rapidly cut to a swelling-up music score as well) and bathe like actresses from a French period-drama.&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The lead, played by Gary Daniels, is introduced in a scene borrowed verbatim from <i>The Good, the Bad and the Ugly</i>.&nbsp;Apart from iconography-loans from Spaghetti Westerns, the film is also, in parts, &nbsp;a chase-drama, a mutant film, a sci-fi film (the production design includes a lot of things with buttons on them, a control room setup, tracking-and-homing devices), a good ol’ action film, a strange childhood grudge-revenge film (the villain and the hero share a childhood rivalry) and there is also an a sentient benevolent race of gypsies who speak English like they are in </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Star Wars</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">. There are injections also of post-punk, lots of leather and chain gangs like Sogo Ishii’s early 80s films. It is as if Florentine believes that if the world were to enter an apocalypse, it will collapse inevitably into a series of endless movie-homages.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Still, one of the great achievements of this film is the very complex psycho-sexual relationship between the female lead and her brother-in-law, the hero. It is rendered sexless by the virtue of her being pregnant (and of course, since it is all just like Civil War, preggers equals pure) but it is also simultaneously strange because the hero and his brother were twins, so that her brother-in-law looks just like her dead husband. Also, the villain Bryan Genesse inhabits this kaleidoscopic, multi-dimensional world perfectly, adding a baritone to his voice and squinting whenever he can, it is a tremendous performance in a tremendous film.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><a name='more'></a><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MyvmZQqpJVM/UOGcHwzrJUI/AAAAAAAABq8/vaZVxfHKLpU/s1600/vlcsnap-2012-12-29-13h50m37s188.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="165" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MyvmZQqpJVM/UOGcHwzrJUI/AAAAAAAABq8/vaZVxfHKLpU/s400/vlcsnap-2012-12-29-13h50m37s188.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b><i><br /></i></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b><i>13 Assassins </i></b>(2010) / Takashi Miike<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">At the outset, I must admit that I had to pause the film in the middle, around the 86-minute mark, in the middle of a scene in which the leader of the group of assassins, standing atop a roof in the village where the final massacre takes place, shouts, ‘Kill them! Kill them all!’I had to stop because I had to cry and like a famous critic once said, ‘it’s difficult to continue seeing when your eyes are blurry with tears.’ I cried because at one level, I realized that what I was watching was a great film, but also because I was overcome with gratitude in front of the power of this medium that so many of us owe the meaning of our existences to. That it can move me so much does not fill me with merely awe, but also much humility. I must also confess that Miike very carefully deposited the moral centers of the film, with a very clear demarcation between the good and the bad and while initially, that led me to believe that it was a very convenient setup for a great action film (which I was enjoying thoroughly), I later realized that this move was crucial in order for him to mount his elaborate revision of older </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">jidaegiki</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> dramas. As such, a few notes:</span></div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Till around the 100-minute mark in the film, Miike allows us to revel in the infallible situation he has setup – men-on-a-mission to kill an evil Lord. It is one of cinema’s unfailing premises – but as soon as the situation begins to go out of the hand and there is a lot of senseless murder (enormous, numerically and in terms of the means used to effect it) Miike suddenly breaks the film’s mould and transmogrifies it from a batter-ram action film to one clearly critical of the audiences that exult in glee at such violence (I fell for the ruse, for instance) – this, he achieves via-a clever two-way strategy, the first by allowing the character of the evil Lord to channelize all the feelings of the viewer. He exists therefore not merely as the villainy-deposit in the film or as target-practise, but as an excellent self-refential in-film commentator who functions on the wrong side of our sympathies, but shares more than a resemblance with us in terms of how we experience violence. For instance, when the leader of the eponymous thirteen assassins spreads open a scroll that reads, ‘Total Destruction’ to display to the forces that guard the Lord, we smile wryly in anticipation. What does the Lord do? He smiles wryly in anticipation. At a point during the showdown where the propensity of action attains a certain scale, you stare at the screen with wonder, he does the same. Similarly, in the final scene, when the grand-showdown condenses to a duel (and here, Miike mocks attitudes to not just this samurai film, but to many others) and the participants wield their swords gracefully, the Lord suddenly remarks, ‘The duel between two swordsmen is so elegant.’ He reads our mind.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Miike also achieves this auto-criticism through a quick shift in aesthetic strategy and by shifting the gears of violence up a notch in a very sly move – the meticulously planned action-choreography in the first half descends into absolute chaos in the second – a collection of short-burst meaningless visuals of blood-spurts, people groaning, falling, dead, muddied and bloody bodies; sounds of swords clinking, groans, grasps, shoves, footsteps on grovel, rain-splatter – but it is just a Grand Guignol of absurdity. The great moral purpose of the fight is lost and by the end, everyone’s killing each other for the heck of it. In a crucial shot, the pupil of one of the thirteen assassins is stabbed by the sword of an enemy-samurai and he falls down, his head sideways – this alignment of his head offers Miike an opportunity to alter our perspective of the whole situation. We enter his subjective point-of-view, from which the dying student now sees his master, hithero an honourable and a very effective swordsman but now eliminating men mercilessly. From the student’s tilted (and therefore, skewed/distorted) perspective, we can now see what his samurai-idol really is: a blood-thirsty and merciless killer, who really has no affinity for the honour of a sword – as soon as he loses it, he picks up a rock and brutally crushes the heads of two enemy soldiers to pulp before dying himself. Through this, Miike demystifies (and more relevantly, deglorifies) the ancient film-samurai, his death is not as clean or as geometric or hygienic as in Kurosawa’s films, but messy and dirty – the samurai collapses into the same slush as everyone else.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">But where the </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">13 Assassins</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> is an even more effective film is in that it really launches a serious inquiry into the benefit of leading one’s life by the </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">samurai</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> code – one led with selfless devotion, sacrifice and utmost loyalty to his master – but Miike sees this more as an subjugation of the samurai’s individuality, his private beliefs and his status as a human being – Miike does not outright dismiss them, but he does cautiously establish the samurai to eventually just be worker-ants, blindly and mindlessly committed to the sustenance of the feudal cause (this there is the Kobayashi strain of the film) and bordering on the verge of being slaves serving ungrateful masters. When Hanbei, the retainer, gives up his life for his Lord, loses the duel against the leader of the thirteen assassins and is eventually beheaded, the Lord walks up to the severed head and kicks it away. That act renders his death futile and purposeless. When the Lord is murdered finally and the mission is complete, only three members from the assassination-team survive: the leader, Shinzaemon, his nephew (a recent convert to the samurai life) and a wandering vagrant (a clever-play on the Mifune character from </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Seven Samurai</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">). The nephew approaches his dying uncle, who tells him: ‘The samurai life is too tough, all these codes. Do something else with your life.’ Post-this, when the nephew wanders the scene of the massacre, he stands in the middle of burning houses and a floor laden with dead bodies, the vagrant engages him in a conversation and asks him what he will do now; the nephew, now devoid of a mission, a mentor or a master (earlier in the film, one samurai says to the other: ‘we are nobodies, we are affiliated to no one.’ This is because they are on a secret-mission and everyone will disown them) is clueless. He wonders aloud, ‘I will go to America and make love to women.’ – this reveals the eventual futility of social service (and really, Miike filmed it as if they were serving themselves, the grateful villagers of </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Seven Samurai</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> are missing from this film) as opposed to empty-headed casual hedonism and the idea that ties this film obliquely with the great Chaplin, </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Monsieur Verdoux</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, where Chaplin posits that to merely exist means to be selfish. Cleverly, the confused samurai does not walk into the sunset (or into the background of the image), but exits through the foreground, i.e. planar-differences that represent a severing from the classical presentation of the samurai character.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The film does end with a title card that announces that indirectly, the massacre brought about the Meiji Era in Japan, thereby rendering the whole assassination consequential, but still, Miike ensures that it wasn’t an act of collective sacrifice as it was of a lot of individual ambitions finding a means to fulfill themselves.</span></li></ul><br /></div>Anuj Malhotrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02502413090811247862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805326092630306229.post-10215629115525702402012-11-11T04:26:00.001-08:002012-11-11T04:33:16.509-08:00A Dead Revolution<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Things have been a bit slow blogside; I was mostly involved with the organisation of the film festival as part of the annual Delhi International Arts Festival, setting up the new issue of <i><a href="http://www.projectorhead.in/">Projectorhead</a></i>, a small <a href="http://www.facebook.com/lightcubefilmsociety">Retrospective</a> of Alain Resnais and separately from these(unfortunately or perhaps not) making a living. The favourites at the Intn'l Festival include: <i>Fat, Short, Bald Men</i>(2011), a rotoscopy Colombian film by Carlos Osuna and in very minor portions, the 1991 <i>Van Gogh</i>&nbsp;by Maurice Pialat (in '90 and '91, three great filmmakers attempted their personal renditions of the painter). The latter was screened on 35mm and the screening was well-attended; the same cannot be said of the other, lesser known films for which the halls were sparsely populated, both by people as well as their enthusiasm. A Polish film, Krysztof Krauze's&nbsp;<i>My Nikifor</i>&nbsp;(2004) was also interesting, at the very least, it featured a pretty cool film (and festival) ending slideshow of hundreds of the 'naive-artist's' works - film putting up a painting exhibition. At any rate, I have been writing a few capsule reviews both for the <i>Projectorhead </i>blog as well as for the magazine itself; one of the most intriguing films of this year for me was the recently-late Koji Wakamatsu's <i>11.25: The Day He Chose His Own Fate</i>(2012), which debuted at Cannes and was one more in his series of films set in&nbsp;<span style="line-height: 115%;"><i>Shōwa </i>series (word's out that he made a new one before his death). Below is an excerpt from my review of the film.</span></span><br /><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3bY05mvf-bc/UJ-YtXmiQFI/AAAAAAAABpo/T5lV1toUnWI/s1600/11.25+The+Day+Mishima+Chose+His+Own+Fate.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3bY05mvf-bc/UJ-YtXmiQFI/AAAAAAAABpo/T5lV1toUnWI/s320/11.25+The+Day+Mishima+Chose+His+Own+Fate.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>11.25: The Day He Chose His Own Fate(2012)</b> / Koji Wakamatsu</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Wakamatsu’s frontally-shot, semi-sterile, mechanical and harsh digital images seem to put Mishima’s revolutionary streak </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">into perspective</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> – one may build a considerable argument that this draining out of the romantic aspect from a revolutionary proclamation is (at the least) easier with digital video, because film’s inherent quality can cause an objective criticism of any idea to collapse rapidly – while the unsophisticated, clean and entirely ‘real’ digital image will remove planar/compositional conveniences of the film image and present all lofty claims, as if made to stand in an inquisition, in the foreground. This is an attribute typical of one of Wakamatsu’s last features – a film about the controversial Japanese novelist, Yukio Mishima, as he leads his merry-band of acolytes/sycophantsin the demand for the restoration of Japan’s loyalty to its Emperor, the nation’s </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">kokutai</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> and the Samurai </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">bushido</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> code; but eventually, to their brutal suicides on the fateful date listed in the film’s title. Wakamatsu’s approach towards the treatment of the Mishima character is exceptional and if a single word would describe it, cautious – he remains vary of presenting the almost-Noble laureate</span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> </i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">as a visionary or a superstar-rebel, instead choosing to entomb the kindred human spirit in a grave full of mirrors. As such, Wakamatsu is clear about presenting Mishima as a sincere, earnest individual with a set of very personal beliefs and the balls to carry on with them, but he doesn’t romanticize these as </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">necessary </i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">qualities; choosing instead, to let Mishima expound on rambling and endless exposition that reveal not merely his actual incapacity to achieve anything of value, but also, at the film’s harshest, just how pathetic his entire endeavour was.&nbsp;</span></div>Anuj Malhotrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02502413090811247862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805326092630306229.post-13947958468536186752012-10-23T14:36:00.001-07:002012-10-23T14:39:14.647-07:00Tokyo Driftin'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The online film journal I run with a few great guys, </span><a href="http://www.projectorhead.in/" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-style: italic;">Projectorhead</a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">&nbsp;just grew a blog of its own. You can visit the subsidiary branch of the magazine here:&nbsp;</span><a href="http://projectorhead.in/blog" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">projectorhead.in/blog</a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">. I will, over time, syndicate a few of my posts there, here. The first is on a recent great film I saw at the Mumbai Film Festival (I originally made the 1600 kilometers long journey to watch a restored print of </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Once Upon a Time in America</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, but as it turned out, the house was declared full. It was full, but of empty seats, but that's a story for another day). Here,</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-k53MhVkpXhU/UIcL_UpWWaI/AAAAAAAABpQ/IGOHHWNUNRc/s1600/Outrage+Beyond.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="199" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-k53MhVkpXhU/UIcL_UpWWaI/AAAAAAAABpQ/IGOHHWNUNRc/s400/Outrage+Beyond.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Outrage Beyond (2012) </b>/ Takeshi Kitano</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">2010’s </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Outrage </i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">features as one of its final sequences a neck-snappin’ execution, the method of which lends itself graciously to Kitano’s perfectly perpendicular, two-dimensional, side-scrolling video game manner of composing and then staging a shot – as the character drives his car further towards the right end of the frame-proscenium, a chain tied to a singular metal contraption present in the left half of the screen snaps tightly, thereby resulting in inarguably agonizing murder. The right half of the image is high-strung by the left. While this is, in the overall scheme, merely another act of violence in a long series of such acts that have preceded it (and will, needless to say, follow it), it is perhaps the only one which includes within itself the room to accommodate sympathy – in the scene that precedes the execution, the murdered character is shown to make love to his girlfriend (who will die as collateral damage in a bullet siege aimed at her lover) and as such, is deemed to be the only functional human being in a melee of programmed and practiced upholders of abstractions like clan loyalty, honour and personal prestige. His eventual death in the car therefore renders the vehicle an entirely human object, the container of a now subdued human heart. </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Outrage Beyond </i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">begins with the image of a similar vehicle being retrieved from within the ocean (the ocean and its shore are often points of culmination in a Kitano film; it is interesting that this film </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">begins</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"> with it) – the image of this piece of soggy, dripping metal strung up by an invisible crane in the middle of the screen is a purely industrial one. It calls into mind a very similar image from Louis Malle’s 1973 documentary, </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Human, Too Human</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">, a film about modern vehicle manufacturing industry and the coldness of the whole arrangement. In </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Outrage Beyond</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">, the title of the film supers in large red serif font over this image of the car – it is the perfect manner in which to begin a sequel, with the notion that time (in-movie time and real-world time between the first film and the sequel) has rendered cinders of old memories frigid and the human car at the end of the first installment meaningless material at the beginning of the second.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">I presume that very few film directors in the world can afford the luxury to end the film the manner in which Takeshi Kitano ends his latest. Kitano uses the entire duration of the film (as well as that of the preceding installment) to set up a large situation of warring gangs trying to gain control over Tokyo, but instead of a large payoff at the end (‘101 Ways To Murder’), Kitano’s Otomo pumps a bullet or two into Kataoka (the policeman and a big jerk, the real villain of the piece) and then, as the recently dead slumps to the ground, looks over his body in a low-angle that is as much the point-of-the-view of the murdered, as it is of the audience members whose collective complacent expectations of the film Kitano’s just taken a piss over. With this final scene, Kitano brings to culmination not merely a power conflict or a narrative problem, but also a certain tradition in the gangster-rivalry film. Instead of bothering with the usuals: dude egos, ambitions of vulgar power, hierarchical conspiracies, loyalty to clans and a world-ending final montage of individual deaths, Otomo eliminates the very engine that drives the giant genre-mechanism – the character who schemes to setup one gang against the other and enjoy the show as they destroy each other. In essence, <i>Outrage Beyond</i> exists first and foremost as a latter day meditation on the common tropes of the gangster film, their inevitable redundancy (someone gets to the top, other wants his position, so on and so forth) and eventually, through this final sequence, their defeat. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Such contemplative audacity is resident not only in this aforementioned scene, but throughout the film; because if&nbsp;</span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Outrage Beyond</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">is anything, it is not a </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">yakuza</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"> film, but a post-</span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">yakuza</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"> film. A sustained atmosphere of a world coming to a somber end seems to permeate through the film, in that, the sedate gliding track-ins that open almost each scene, the tired medium frontal close-ups that its characters populate, the absence of any real soundtrack and character conversations that contain more meaningless mumbling than wisecracks seem to suggest that if the first film was the party, the second’s just the hangover. In that, it employs its duration to not ‘up the stakes’ in the manner of a blockbuster Hollywood sequel or create a cutesy wrap-up of the casual barbarism and haemo-shower-variety show resident in the first film, but instead, take the gangster film and volunteer that really, because the gangster film is inevitably driven by a hunger for power, no conclusion is possible because as long as there is a hierarchy, there will be those who are actually powerful and those who wish they were instead. Therefore, the only real end is to murder the agent (in this case, the policeman) that induces entropy into a stable system and through this, preserve the status quo. So even as there are many shootouts close to the end, Kitano’s big point remains to make them seem like a stuck record, playing itself endlessly into an infinite loop of absolute pointlessness. These shootouts are so many that eventually, Kitano manages to leak the human possibility out of them (as Michael Mann tells us, even gangster takedowns involve human death) because as they keep going on, you don’t even know who’s dying and who’s killin’ – I suspect Kitano even got the same extras to play roles on either side in successive sequences.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">As such, Kitano cleverly reduces the gangster universe inside his film – specifically the <i>yakuza </i>universe to an anachronistic setting, a fascist setup run inside a world that really has moved on from such adherence to empty symbols. It is notable that unlike the first installment, the sequel doesn’t feature a single real interaction between the habitants of the gangster universe with those of the world outside – there are no wives, girlfriends, children or mothers – it is as if these gang members live in a giant bubble of delusion by themselves. They seem to possess an enormous amount of power (which is why, the problems), but its application seems to effect no one but those in their peer group. Kitano concerns himself with constructing therefore a universe which projects its energy externally (by becoming a social concern or public enemies) but internally; it wouldn’t be a surprise if the final twist is that they exist on an island far from the coast of Japan. Kitano’s piece-by-piece takedown of the <i>yakuza </i>world, of which he has now been a cinematic ambassador for over two decades now, is very interesting – he reduces it to a universe obsessed with hollow symbols and their pursuit; his character Otomo is the <i>enfant terrible </i>who no one likes because well, he could care less. He talks down to ‘seniors’ in the organization, refuses to take orders and has no interest in setting up his own crime-family. In this, <i>Outrage Beyond </i>is closest not to other gangster films, including a few made by Kitano himself, but to the twin <i>jidaegeki</i> dramas of Masaki Kobayashi – <i>Hara-Kiri </i>and <i>Samurai Rebellion</i>, where characters (or as in the case of <i>Outrage Beyond</i>, a single character) enters a state of rebellion against a system built entirely on the sustenance of illogical symbols, the sort of which Kitano reduces the <i>yakuza </i>existence to – seasonal gifts, tattoos (a character, while emphasizing the undeserved reputation of a peer laments, ‘He doesn’t even have the correct tattoos’), chopped pinky fingers, suited attire (the henchmen wear black suits, the bosses can choose their sartor and such. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Kitano then takes to evaluating his own ‘violent guy’ persona – if <i>Outrage Beyond </i>is a great film, it is because he is interested not in creating another manifestation of his gangster persona, but an old-man’s ‘looking back at it’ introspection of it. When the policeman character informs him in prison of an impending parole and encourages him to join the <i>yakuza </i>setup again (again, to induce chaos into a stable setup and to get them fighting again), Kitano replies, ‘I am too old for this shit.’ And it’s clever, because as he pulls off his private <i>Gran Torino </i>with it, it seems to be a message similar to the one inherent in Seijun Suzuki’s <i>Tokyo Drifter</i>, where the director uses his lead character to mouth a message of dissent to the studio that asks him to keep making the same type of film; explaining his predicament to another character, the drifter exclaims: ‘I keep trying to move on, but they keep asking me to come back.’ With <i>Outrage Beyond</i>, Kitano conducts some Tokyo Driftin’ of his own.<span style="font-size: 7pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div>Anuj Malhotrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02502413090811247862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805326092630306229.post-78614646573005939462012-09-23T15:52:00.000-07:002012-09-23T15:52:42.254-07:00A Love of Materials<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PFC_Knffis4/UF-SALka4qI/AAAAAAAABmg/IfNrhegWbjs/s1600/vlcsnap-2012-09-11-12h34m10s227.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="289" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PFC_Knffis4/UF-SALka4qI/AAAAAAAABmg/IfNrhegWbjs/s400/vlcsnap-2012-09-11-12h34m10s227.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Antonio Gaudi (1985)</b> / Hiroshi Teshigahara</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Antonio Gaudi</span></i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> ties into the rest of the Teshigahara filmography also via the theme of metamorphoses – his work seems to delve perpetually into the &nbsp;of this metamorphoses of an object (in Teshigahara, it is crucial to view the human body as a material, a <i>thing</i>) from one form to the other; therefore, a number of his films situate themselves in the middle of this mutation. As a filmmaker, Teshigahara’s pre-occupation remains not the end result of this process, but the process itself – if presented therefore with a ‘work in progress’, he is bound to focus on the ‘progress’, rather than the larger ‘work’. In <i>Antonio Gaudi</i>,<i> </i>Teshigahara devotes the final third of the film to a very material study of the <i>Sagrada Família</i>, not arguably Gaudi’s most famous accomplishment, and yet, incomplete or unfinished. The film contains several shots of the structure surrounded by construction cranes, cement, workers, safety helmets, wooden framework and other modern architectural framework – it is essential therefore, that it is seen as a work-in-progress and a structure built of brick, mortar, ceramics, stained glass and wrought iron. It is also not entirely untrue that the film can sometimes make the site of the church building resemble the laboratory from <i>The Face of Another</i>, where throughout most of the film, a man’s face is the site of a formidable architectural ambition. &nbsp;</span></div></div>Anuj Malhotrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02502413090811247862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805326092630306229.post-48716970638385615572012-09-22T07:11:00.000-07:002012-09-22T07:11:33.598-07:00The Solitary Usherettes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The sort of women whose specters will inevitably haunt the theatres of their employment long after their bodies are dead,</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-29SrmchaRWg/UF3GZYLnXnI/AAAAAAAABmA/8wn6jTpDRqk/s1600/New+York+Movie,+Edward+Hopper.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="323" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-29SrmchaRWg/UF3GZYLnXnI/AAAAAAAABmA/8wn6jTpDRqk/s400/New+York+Movie,+Edward+Hopper.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>New York Movie</i></b> '39 , Edward Hopper</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tllC8lOOvqI/UF3GabY47VI/AAAAAAAABmI/5QVprqPUgH0/s1600/Goodbye,+Dragon+Inn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="238" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tllC8lOOvqI/UF3GabY47VI/AAAAAAAABmI/5QVprqPUgH0/s400/Goodbye,+Dragon+Inn.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003) /</b> Tsai-Ming Liang</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>Anuj Malhotrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02502413090811247862noreply@blogger.com0